Not sure if you are referring to me or Daystar, but swapping life for death is an easy choice. Christianity believes in invisible spirits and ghosts and goblins and such. Demons instead of recognizing mental sicknesses for what they are. "Satan" instead of realizing that is just the bible's view of the human heart. But resurrection? Coming back from the dead to life? That is something natural sounding to me. I see no reason why we cannot live forever in the human form. WE are really designed to live and collect information forever. Scientists have yet to figure out why we grow old and decay and die. Unless God has put this governor on us. At any rate, Shalom and may YHWH bless you with love and peace and flowers.
Buddhism, Taoism, Meditation, and any other Non-Christian Journeys...
by exjdub 40 Replies latest jw friends
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yaddayadda
There is overwhelming anecdotal evidence for believing in the spirit-realm. Millions of persons have claimed to have had inexplicable experiences with the spirit-realm, atheist and religious. Discount it at your peril. Butters, if you believe in Yahweh and Yahshua then you must also believe in angels and demons. Otherwise you must reject the gospels and must therefore reject Yahshua? Can't have one without the other. You can't pick what suits your belief system in the gospels and reject the rest as mere allegory. You're just like all the rest, you like to pick what you like from the bible and discard whatever doesn't personally suit u.
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JamesThomas
What are your Non-Christian journeys?
Why journey at all? What truth is not already present, that we feel we must travel to? It is truth, which we are after, is it not?
So what is true? First it may help to watch the mind and see that ALL of it's interpritations, labels, beliefs, ideas and concepts are only mental abstracts, and not the actual reality we seek. In other words: if it can be thought or spoken, it's not it. Not the absolute truth and actuality we seek. So, what is?
Right here, right now, there is at our most immediate and intimate center an indefinable, unthinkable and unspeakable conscious beingness and aliveness. It is here, this pool of truth, that all sense of existence, self and universe revolve around. Leave the mind and all its interpritations and go deeper here. Right here. Right now. No need to journey afar. No need for beliefs. No need for religion. No need to learn or earn anything. No need for anything other than what you already are at the core...already. It's about seeing. Consciousness realizing the pristine purity and untouchable vastness of Itself. Who/what, are you, really?
Be still, and know...
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Satanus
Daystar
How you can say it's "probably zionist" is beyond me. While tradition has its origin with Moses and later Abraham, it probably did originate in the 12th century AD. The zionist movement didn't exist until the late 19th century. Sooo... *shrug*
My thought was that many modern day kabbalist teachers are probably zionist, in doing some research, i found that zionism was popular among kabbalists already in the middle ages.
From the 13th century onwards, those who sought to "force the end" were identified with the teachings of Kabbalah. And central to Kabbalah was a text known as the "Zohar", which taught that only in the land of Israel could the religion of the Jews reach its full stature. Starting in the late 15th century in connection with the expulsion from Spain and Portugal and the rise of the Ottoman empire, literally tens of thousands of Kabbalists, most of them Sephardim, did in fact settle in the land of Israel in the "four holy cities" of Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron. These Kabbalists were Zionists in all but name, and their Zionism was a direct expression of the religion of the Jews as they understood it.
http://www.jewishmag.com/89mag/zionism/zionism.htm
Dozens of leading rabbinic sages and their families come to Palestine in the years before 1648. Most of them were kabbalists of the school of Rabbis Cordoveo and Luria.
http://www.jewishagency.org/JewishAgency/English/Aliyah/Publications/The+ Aliyon/Time+Bites.htm
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jaguarbass
Take your shoes off at the door.
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exjdub
Thanks everyone for your input. Just what I was looking for. I wanted to continue the thread with a little better thread management on my part, however I had an emergency at work and was unable to respond properly. I would like to address one comment:
Yaddayadda said:
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exjdub
As I was saying: Yaddayadda said:
So you've 'seen behind the curtain' of Christianity huh? Sounds to me like you're just swapping one curtain for another. Swapping Christianity for a lot of nonsense about reincarnation, etc. Well, good luck.
You have made a huge assumption, and an incorrect one at that. I have not swapped anything for anything yet and I never mentioned reincarnation, although that is certainly one journey among many. I have simply asked for input about what other people are experiencing in their journey. How else are we to learn and experience if we do not explore and share? I feel sorry for you in this area because for you to conclude thay everything else is "nonsense" just because of a bad experience with one path indicates that your journey has ended, although only you can answer that for a certainty. I had enough of the narrow view of "I am right and everything else is nonsense" when I was a Dub, so I keep a very open mind now. Also, I have had some experiences in my journey that are in no way "nonsense", but rather have been quite pleasant and informative. Meditation, Tai Chi, and acupuncture are just a few of these. Although I don't agree with your view, I do appreciate your input. Peace, exjdub
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daystar
Interesting Satanus... Perhaps a good thing I study the "corrupted" teachings of the Kabbalah (Quabalah) like a typical mashugana, huh?
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trevor
This is an interesting subject. I have some sympathy with most religious traditions and their aim of searching out what is behind our physical existence.
Eastern religion contains some useful philosophy and practises such as meditation can help to produce a calmer, clearer mind. In essence, though, as people get deeper into Eastern religion they are expected to accept Karma and find themselves saying things such as, ’It was meant to be,’ Or if there is an accident and one person escapes unharmed and another dies, ‘it was his time.’
Eventually it all comes down to the same basic idea that a powerful invisible being of force is pulling the strings and we are the puppets. I have to ask why this force didn’t pull the strings necessary to avoid a person building up bad Karma in the first place. This question can also be applied to the Bibles idea of the fall from grace.
I try to take what is good and useful from these spiritual disciplines and avoid becoming fatalistic. I avoid any practise that requires ‘belief.’ To me - What IS - simply IS. I can live a useful life without projecting my mind onto a dogma or theory and saying, ‘I believe.’
You could say, ‘I want to worship and look to a god for help, how can I worship unless I believe?’
Ah! There’s the rub.
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parakeet
trevor: "Eventually it all comes down to the same basic idea that a powerful invisible being of force is pulling the strings and we are the puppets."
Your understanding of Eastern philosophy is seriously flawed. "Submission to fate implies someone who submits, someone who is the helpless puppet of circumstances, and for Zen there is no such person. The duality of subject and object, of the knower and the known is seen to be just as relative, as mutual, as inseparable as every other. We do not sweat because it is hot; the sweating is the heat. It is just as true to say that the sun is light because of the eyes as to say that the eyes see light because of the sun. The viewpoint is unfamiliar because it is our settled convention to think that heat comes first and then, by causality, the body sweats." (Alan Watts, "The Way of Zen")
Buddhism (and other Eastern religious philosophies) have much more depth than you are giving them credit for. Please educate yourself before making such sweeping, erroneous generalizations.