Over the past 6 months I have had a drastic change in the way I see things and believe things spiritually. I will probably explain this in several different future posts. Basically at this point, I would consider myself an ardent, very sceptical, questioning, believer. All of this began while I was reading about UFO's earlier this year. I became very sceptical about the phenomenon and I saw many parallels to religion and other belief systems. I will also explain this later and in more detail.
Tonight, as I was doing dishes I had these thoughts. Why must we "believe" in God? Why is it so important in various texts that we declare him our Father and think about him and worship him? Why is it so important to other people and groups that we believe in God. If he truly is our father then does our belief in him keep him alive, is it all that makes him real? If no one recognized him as real and everyone lost their belief in him, what would happen? Would he disappear, would we? I think these are all really good questions to ask.
If he truly is our father, would he not love us, belief in him or not? Why would we expect any less of him. If he truly is our father, would he not send us off on our "Earthly" adventure and wish us well? Could we just be joyous that we will have a reunion and see him again someday instead of prostrating ourselves on Earth, being constantly divided up, and at odds with one another over this.
I truly hope he is our father and not just an appendage of our consciousness, it would be nice to continue on as spirits and not be alone but to have celestial family. If this is the case, then I trust that all he requires of us is the same thing he requires of himself, to love. Worship is not love, nor is division. Love is much much simpler than we realize and even more powerful.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Litmus
People who are concerned with your salvation should just show you this picture and if you laugh, you're going to Hell anyway. They needn't bother.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Like living in a glass prison
I had a very nice man come to the house preaching the Mormon ideals today (I have had the same type of interactions with Baptists, so I'm not singling out Mormons). With him, I couldn't agree despite the best of his intentions. The first thing that he laid out and hit me with was a fear argument. I despise fear motivating arguments the most, they are in fact very aggressive and deceitful and the people propagating them probably don't even realize it. I will never accept fear as a doctrine on which to base my beliefs. Did someone teach him this to keep him in fear too? If it's all he knows then I truly feel sorry for him because I can imagine what his prison is like, he can't even see the bars from the inside.
He said, "Don't you love your daughter? How would you feel if she were not there in eternity with you? You should get baptized."
Here are some arguments:
1) He is right. I will be alone forever, not in Hell but in some sort of inferior place to a higher heaven. I will miss my daughter terribly for eternity.
2) The church will baptize me anyway in the temple whether I give them permission to or not so my bases are covered.
3) What if in fact you are baptized and do accept the savior but then never attend any church your whole life, are you still saved? Will people still try to get you to go to church or if you just say, Yeah, I've been baptized, will they leave you alone? It is not assumed that church sessions and membership follow baptism. If it's solely the act of baptism that saves you and you accepting a savior, then why not just do that. Is it encouraged and sought by members just to recruit more members ultimately. Someone please enlighten me.
4) If there is a God and he was one who would punish people with this kind of eternal misery because they didn't go "pay" (as in tithings or whatever) to be a member of a church, so they could get baptized to be a member of his club. This is a God I would not want to believe in anyway.
5) If there is an eternity and a God, I've got to believe he is a loving God and the Universe is not static. When I die I will not have missed my last chance. If I have eternity to live and baptism was really that important of a step, then surely there is a baptismal font at the gates of Heaven for last minute takers. God is not a "Gotcha God". He is all merciful right? People have more of a motivation to see you baptized while you're on Earth. After that, it's too late according to them!
I really do not worry about where I will go or where my family will go when we die. It's sad to me that he would use this as a motivator. As if I was some sort of fretting ninny, like Oh My Gosh where is the nearest pool of holy water, I don't want to be alone forever sitting in God's dunce corner!!
Neither did I fret over who my birth mother would be or how much the labor process would suck or who I would spend life on Earth with and so I figure it shall be with my time after death. I can't prove or disprove the existence of God or of an afterlife. The Universe is such an amazing place that I'm sure there are all kinds of surprises in store for us if we do continue on. I am so very hopeful and optimistic about my eternal future that not even an Earth religion can bring me down.
He said, "Don't you love your daughter? How would you feel if she were not there in eternity with you? You should get baptized."
Here are some arguments:
1) He is right. I will be alone forever, not in Hell but in some sort of inferior place to a higher heaven. I will miss my daughter terribly for eternity.
2) The church will baptize me anyway in the temple whether I give them permission to or not so my bases are covered.
3) What if in fact you are baptized and do accept the savior but then never attend any church your whole life, are you still saved? Will people still try to get you to go to church or if you just say, Yeah, I've been baptized, will they leave you alone? It is not assumed that church sessions and membership follow baptism. If it's solely the act of baptism that saves you and you accepting a savior, then why not just do that. Is it encouraged and sought by members just to recruit more members ultimately. Someone please enlighten me.
4) If there is a God and he was one who would punish people with this kind of eternal misery because they didn't go "pay" (as in tithings or whatever) to be a member of a church, so they could get baptized to be a member of his club. This is a God I would not want to believe in anyway.
5) If there is an eternity and a God, I've got to believe he is a loving God and the Universe is not static. When I die I will not have missed my last chance. If I have eternity to live and baptism was really that important of a step, then surely there is a baptismal font at the gates of Heaven for last minute takers. God is not a "Gotcha God". He is all merciful right? People have more of a motivation to see you baptized while you're on Earth. After that, it's too late according to them!
I really do not worry about where I will go or where my family will go when we die. It's sad to me that he would use this as a motivator. As if I was some sort of fretting ninny, like Oh My Gosh where is the nearest pool of holy water, I don't want to be alone forever sitting in God's dunce corner!!
Neither did I fret over who my birth mother would be or how much the labor process would suck or who I would spend life on Earth with and so I figure it shall be with my time after death. I can't prove or disprove the existence of God or of an afterlife. The Universe is such an amazing place that I'm sure there are all kinds of surprises in store for us if we do continue on. I am so very hopeful and optimistic about my eternal future that not even an Earth religion can bring me down.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
A new type of vision
This material from Dr. David Hawkins seems to be a good chaser to the last post I wrote about the way we see the world and what affect it has on us as well as others. I found this segment in his book "Healing and Recovery" that my Step mom recently gifted to me.
P52 "We find that we have to let go of criticism "attack" thoughts, critical thoughts, and judgemental thoughts. We have to let go of putting ourselves in the position of being right and making other people wrong because the level of "Right and Wrong" is at the energy level of about 180, which is that of negative thought forms. In other words, it has a deleterious effect of our health and life energy. If we are willing to let go of our illness, then we have to be willing to let go of the attitude that brought about the illness because disease in an expression of one's attitude and habitual way of looking at things." A little later he says this, " To put oneself in the energy field of 540 is to automatically heal oneself. A loving thought then heals, and a negative thought creates illness. Choosing to become a loving person results in the release of endorphins by the brain, which has a profound effect on the body's health and happiness."
Dr. Hawkins goes on for a few more pages, but that is the gist of it. The numbers above (180 & 540) come from a calibrated Scale of Consciousness that he has determined and is outlined in his first book "Power Vs Force". It is well worth the read and the Scale of Consciousness really explains a lot about human society and it basically describes how you see the world based on where you fall on the scale.
Monitoring your thoughts and catching the judgemental ones, I find to be really really difficult. Besides fighting human fear impulses, fighting the need to judge is probably the most difficult thing to overcome. We judge everything. It probably was a very useful evolutionary tool to keep us out of harms way. The ability to judge a situation might have kept us from getting eaten by a mammoth but it seems that the human mind is rampant with it today, especially when it is applied to how we see others. I catch myself all the time in judgemental thoughts that usually just appear and only later can I forgive them and myself and let them go, after I recognize that I was actually judging. Sometimes it's just subconscious because we are so used to doing it.
There is a great book called "My Stroke of Insight : A Brain Scientists Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor. She was a Harvard trained Neuroscientist that had a stroke one day and recorded her entire journey and reflected back on her ordeal to explain what she learned about herself. One of her discoveries was that before her stroke she was very judgemental and critical and left brained. The stroke basically wiped her brain clean of its old patterns and she had to go through rigorous therapy over a period of eight years. What she discovered was that she had the unique opportunity to re-set her brain, to think differently and see the world differently. She talks about being responsible for the things we think because it sets neural pathways over time that become ingrained in our physiology. She says it's very important that we be responsible for our thoughts, maintain awareness, and take action to stop negative patterns. We are what we eat, why aren't we also what we think?
Lastly, it is important not to be judgemental of others but also not to be judgemental of ourselves. Edgar Cayce, the great seer, said that it is important not to condemn self and that it was just as harmful and deleterious to think negatively of yourself as it was to think so of others. Constantly having negative thoughts towards ones self I would imagine produce even more dramatic and faster negative physical symptoms than having them about others.
Could this be the answer:
My favorite part about the Course In Miracles is that it harps away at Forgiveness. It basically says forgiveness is the answer to most of the problems that we encounter and that the world is starving for forgiveness. If you can learn to forgive others for ignorance and also forgive yourself then you can cancel out many errors in judgement. If you do it enough, and practice it like a meditation or a mantra for your life it really becomes a new vision of the world, a much more kinder gentler vision. ACIM basically says forgiveness is a miracle. P4 Miracle principle #21 says, " Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles, you accept God's forgiveness by extending it to others".
ACIM goes on to say on P47, " You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourself and your brothers totally without judgement. When you recognize what you are and what your brothers are, you will realize that judging them in any way is without meaning. In fact, their meaning is lost to you precisely because you are judging them. You do not need judgement to organize your life, and you certainly do not need it to organize yourself. In the presence of knowledge all judgement is automatically suspended, and this is the process that enables recognition to replace perception."
A new vision:
In the Gospel of Thomas, the disciples asked Jesus , "When will the kingdom come?" He replies,
P52 "We find that we have to let go of criticism "attack" thoughts, critical thoughts, and judgemental thoughts. We have to let go of putting ourselves in the position of being right and making other people wrong because the level of "Right and Wrong" is at the energy level of about 180, which is that of negative thought forms. In other words, it has a deleterious effect of our health and life energy. If we are willing to let go of our illness, then we have to be willing to let go of the attitude that brought about the illness because disease in an expression of one's attitude and habitual way of looking at things." A little later he says this, " To put oneself in the energy field of 540 is to automatically heal oneself. A loving thought then heals, and a negative thought creates illness. Choosing to become a loving person results in the release of endorphins by the brain, which has a profound effect on the body's health and happiness."
Dr. Hawkins goes on for a few more pages, but that is the gist of it. The numbers above (180 & 540) come from a calibrated Scale of Consciousness that he has determined and is outlined in his first book "Power Vs Force". It is well worth the read and the Scale of Consciousness really explains a lot about human society and it basically describes how you see the world based on where you fall on the scale.
Monitoring your thoughts and catching the judgemental ones, I find to be really really difficult. Besides fighting human fear impulses, fighting the need to judge is probably the most difficult thing to overcome. We judge everything. It probably was a very useful evolutionary tool to keep us out of harms way. The ability to judge a situation might have kept us from getting eaten by a mammoth but it seems that the human mind is rampant with it today, especially when it is applied to how we see others. I catch myself all the time in judgemental thoughts that usually just appear and only later can I forgive them and myself and let them go, after I recognize that I was actually judging. Sometimes it's just subconscious because we are so used to doing it.
There is a great book called "My Stroke of Insight : A Brain Scientists Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor. She was a Harvard trained Neuroscientist that had a stroke one day and recorded her entire journey and reflected back on her ordeal to explain what she learned about herself. One of her discoveries was that before her stroke she was very judgemental and critical and left brained. The stroke basically wiped her brain clean of its old patterns and she had to go through rigorous therapy over a period of eight years. What she discovered was that she had the unique opportunity to re-set her brain, to think differently and see the world differently. She talks about being responsible for the things we think because it sets neural pathways over time that become ingrained in our physiology. She says it's very important that we be responsible for our thoughts, maintain awareness, and take action to stop negative patterns. We are what we eat, why aren't we also what we think?
Lastly, it is important not to be judgemental of others but also not to be judgemental of ourselves. Edgar Cayce, the great seer, said that it is important not to condemn self and that it was just as harmful and deleterious to think negatively of yourself as it was to think so of others. Constantly having negative thoughts towards ones self I would imagine produce even more dramatic and faster negative physical symptoms than having them about others.
Could this be the answer:
My favorite part about the Course In Miracles is that it harps away at Forgiveness. It basically says forgiveness is the answer to most of the problems that we encounter and that the world is starving for forgiveness. If you can learn to forgive others for ignorance and also forgive yourself then you can cancel out many errors in judgement. If you do it enough, and practice it like a meditation or a mantra for your life it really becomes a new vision of the world, a much more kinder gentler vision. ACIM basically says forgiveness is a miracle. P4 Miracle principle #21 says, " Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles, you accept God's forgiveness by extending it to others".
ACIM goes on to say on P47, " You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourself and your brothers totally without judgement. When you recognize what you are and what your brothers are, you will realize that judging them in any way is without meaning. In fact, their meaning is lost to you precisely because you are judging them. You do not need judgement to organize your life, and you certainly do not need it to organize yourself. In the presence of knowledge all judgement is automatically suspended, and this is the process that enables recognition to replace perception."
A new vision:
In the Gospel of Thomas, the disciples asked Jesus , "When will the kingdom come?" He replies,
"It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, 'Look, here!' or 'Look, there!' Rather, the Father's kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don't see it.
Heaven on Earth is already here but people do not see it. Do they choose not to see it that way? To me this quote is about seeing the world a different way. Not looking to some future tense for a promised Heaven in the sky but seeing one in this very moment by looking at the world with new eyes and a kinder heart, forgiving yourself and others.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Idols and the Anti-Christ, no spinning heads here
The things we worship here on Earth turn to dust. All of them. A Course In Miracles calls these things "Idols". We seek them out everywhere, thousands upon thousands, until we find the last one, death. ACIM claims it's an empty vicious cycle that can be stopped when you know what is real in the world and what is not. Idols are things made up by everyone in their minds to substitute for reality.
ACIM says p619. : What is an idol? Do you think you know? For idols are unrecognized as such, and never seen for what they really are. That is the only power they have. Their purpose is obscure, and they are feared and worshiped, both, because you do not know what they are for, and why they have been made. An idol is an image of your brother that you would value more than what he is. Idols are made that he may be replaced, no matter what their form. And it is this that never is perceived and recognized. Be it a body or a thing, a place, a situation or circumstance, an object owned or wanted, or a right demanded or achieved, it is the same.
ACIM goes on to say that the penalty for creating idols is, "not looking within for certainty and quiet calm that liberates you from the world, and lets you stand apart, in quiet and in peace." p619
According to ACIM, idols are the Anti-Christ, a substitute for seeing your brother as yourself. There are millions of ways to do it, and the world as we know it has found probably all of them by now. The Christ is not a person and so you do not have to believe in anyone or worship anything, worshiping is another form of idolization. Instead, it is an inner journey, it has to do with you, your vision of the world. It is a way of looking at the world, a kind of vision that sees (chooses to see) kindness everywhere it looks, love, beauty, peace. It rejects notions of hate and intolerance even though they are there; no faith is put in those visions.
ACIM says p619. : What is an idol? Do you think you know? For idols are unrecognized as such, and never seen for what they really are. That is the only power they have. Their purpose is obscure, and they are feared and worshiped, both, because you do not know what they are for, and why they have been made. An idol is an image of your brother that you would value more than what he is. Idols are made that he may be replaced, no matter what their form. And it is this that never is perceived and recognized. Be it a body or a thing, a place, a situation or circumstance, an object owned or wanted, or a right demanded or achieved, it is the same.
ACIM goes on to say that the penalty for creating idols is, "not looking within for certainty and quiet calm that liberates you from the world, and lets you stand apart, in quiet and in peace." p619
According to ACIM, idols are the Anti-Christ, a substitute for seeing your brother as yourself. There are millions of ways to do it, and the world as we know it has found probably all of them by now. The Christ is not a person and so you do not have to believe in anyone or worship anything, worshiping is another form of idolization. Instead, it is an inner journey, it has to do with you, your vision of the world. It is a way of looking at the world, a kind of vision that sees (chooses to see) kindness everywhere it looks, love, beauty, peace. It rejects notions of hate and intolerance even though they are there; no faith is put in those visions.
Monday, February 22, 2010
New blog title
Explanation for my new blog title :
Critical mass is a sociodynamic term to describe the existence of sufficient momentum in a social system such that the momentum becomes self-sustaining and fuels further growth. -WIKI
I like it.
Critical mass is a sociodynamic term to describe the existence of sufficient momentum in a social system such that the momentum becomes self-sustaining and fuels further growth. -WIKI
I like it.
Something I am convinced of...
Everything happens in its own time. Wherever you are, whatever your situation is, is the exact experience you need to be having. There are times when things shift and change but you can not make changes happen any sooner than they are meant to.
I really believe that it only looks like we are in control of our major life situations, where as in reality, there are major shifts in fields of potentiality that need to happen for change. If you have ever had that feeling that you are up against a brick wall and then suddenly things change and you feel a "flow" or a freedom to move or grow or change directions again, this is what I'm talking about. I have experienced it many times and what it eventually teaches you is that you can not force things, sometimes you just have to wait for the potential to exist first and then change becomes easy, like water flowing over a fall.
I really believe that it only looks like we are in control of our major life situations, where as in reality, there are major shifts in fields of potentiality that need to happen for change. If you have ever had that feeling that you are up against a brick wall and then suddenly things change and you feel a "flow" or a freedom to move or grow or change directions again, this is what I'm talking about. I have experienced it many times and what it eventually teaches you is that you can not force things, sometimes you just have to wait for the potential to exist first and then change becomes easy, like water flowing over a fall.
Choke out the weeds of fear with love
From A Course In Miracles - p32
"It has already been said that you believe you cannot control fear because you yourself made it, and your belief in it seems to render it out of your control. Yet any attempt to resolve the error through attempting the mastery of fear is useless. In fact, it asserts the power of fear by the very assumption that it need be mastered. The true resolution rests entirely on mastery through love. In the interim, however, the sense of conflict is inevitable, since you have placed yourself in a position where you believe in the power of what does not exist."
A lot of human behavior is fear based. How would it feel different every day to live in a positive calm state, even a neutral state, rather than a state of fear?
One of the best book titles ever is "Only Love Is Real" by Dr. Brian Weiss. It's a great read as well. The title reminds me of the quote above and the book is about love transcending time.
If there is a non-material state that exists after this one, the only thing that I am aware of that we can take with us is love and the memories that we stored regarding love in our soul. Fear and hate do not exist outside of the body. Fear and hate need a body to survive, a host. I do hope that love is eternal and transcendent.
What the Course says about love in the introduction is very powerful as well:
"The Course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite".
"It has already been said that you believe you cannot control fear because you yourself made it, and your belief in it seems to render it out of your control. Yet any attempt to resolve the error through attempting the mastery of fear is useless. In fact, it asserts the power of fear by the very assumption that it need be mastered. The true resolution rests entirely on mastery through love. In the interim, however, the sense of conflict is inevitable, since you have placed yourself in a position where you believe in the power of what does not exist."
A lot of human behavior is fear based. How would it feel different every day to live in a positive calm state, even a neutral state, rather than a state of fear?
One of the best book titles ever is "Only Love Is Real" by Dr. Brian Weiss. It's a great read as well. The title reminds me of the quote above and the book is about love transcending time.
If there is a non-material state that exists after this one, the only thing that I am aware of that we can take with us is love and the memories that we stored regarding love in our soul. Fear and hate do not exist outside of the body. Fear and hate need a body to survive, a host. I do hope that love is eternal and transcendent.
What the Course says about love in the introduction is very powerful as well:
"The Course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite".
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