by still thinking 778 Replies latest jw friends
God is FIRST a person. Secondly a quality which is love....N.Drew
OK...you lost me here. How can God be a person? Maybe you have explained this further down the track...and I am just not up to that yet...I will keep reading...I think I am getting confused about who or what your God actually is. Maybe this is why I find it difficult to understand where you are coming from sometimes.
Welcome back to the thread zid....what you have described here is what I am asking Vanderhoven about his incident involving the woman who claimed to be a witch. I am simply asking if he thinks it is reasonable to come to the conclusion it was God, and not just signs he didn't realize he was absorbing on a subconscience level...I suppose he will never truly know that though, unless he asked others in his class if they came to the same conclusion about the woman.
Vanderhoven...I am not saying you didn't hear God...but there seems to be other explanations for what you may have experienced. Can you really discount them?
Well, I went back a few pages - to page 29, I think - but couldn't find Vanderhoven's original post regarding his perception of the "witch"...
Reminds me of a YouTube video, though...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1dtriZ-IcA
And this:
Makes me want to turn this into a "Flying Monkeys" thread!!!
But I'll just stick this in here, instead...
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/social/humour/221241/1/FLYING-MONKEYS
Yes, that was what I was referring to...the knowing, and how similar it felt. But I am still not sure how you know WHO you are hearing from *that is if you are*...you can be certain you are hearing...but can you be certain from whom? How can you be sure it is external and not internal? Ie..the self.
Um, the knowing WHO is the important part of it. It is the distinction that I get that 'knowing' feeling from.
For instance, if I ask myself, 'Hmm... was that me or Him?', there is no knowing feeling. Most likely, this is just me... the 'I' everyone is referring to. But when it is Him speaking to me, I know it is Him. I don't have the doubts. I don't have to ask myself that question. I know.
If I could continue with this question from Palmtree.....self examination is limited to what questions we ask of ourselves. So in a way we are all limited by what we ask ourselves arent we? I have drawn conclusions from things and later discovered I was completely wrong
simply because I was not equiped with the right questions. They had never occured to me.
Of course. But if someone is asking me a question that I have already asked myself, and searched and searched for the answer to as well, then the fact that my answer comes quickly is not a sign that I refuse to self-e x amine. Perhaps just a sign that I already have done so, and that I know myself enough to answer at once.
It wasn't necessarily a question Palm directed at me. But that is all I was trying to e x plain.
Peace,
tammy
stillthinking
soft+gentle....I really like your I post. I have to admit it took me at least 10 times rereading it before I actually began to grasp what you were saying. So undertanding the I completely releases us from its control. We are releasing ourselves from our own restrictions. Is that correct? Or do I have that completely wrong? |
thankyou stillthinking
in the classics indentity comes under much scrutiny and part of understanding how identity is formed releases us from its control and its restrictions. Some of the restrictions imposed we foist on ourselves but most others are imposed by forces outside of ourselves but which interface with us all the time albeit unconsciously. I'm saying this because I don't think it is possible to understand the I completely. The problem with trying to understand onself as an I restricts us to what we have understood whereas much more is unkown. And the gist of this thread indicates to me that it is this unkown aspect that you are intuiting.
I like the idea of focusing on qualities/virtues like love, courage, hope, hate and states like pleasure, anxiety, happiness etc as these retain a sense of the turbulence that identity pushes out but which are vital for change and escape. Michel Serres, one of our oft cited authors, likenes Aphrodite/Venus, goddess of love and healing to the turbulence between unity and chaos. Whilst other authors liken her solely to unity - particularly authors who are fixed on rationalism.
What I get from how christians describe God, God after JW Jehovah that is, he/she/it seems to be like the eye of a hurrincane - a small place of calm surrounded by turbulence. The calm is formed from turbulence and moves with the storm. So to me the small quivering I formed from this is no unified identity based on rationalism that results in an I.
I don't want to expunge identity completely from ourselves. Here I want to borrow something from Beyonce. She steps into a personality to perform and then relinquishes it when she is not performing. Her performance has an effect on us and her - reality and unreality in conjunction as she cannot perform unless she steps into a role.
It is like what you are saying here - desperation, survivial, escape, stark harsh reality of annihilation=turbulence=new roles
jgnat...I am not sure if I received divine direction to escape my marriage...I always think of it as desperation and survival of the self, before the self was annihilated that got me out. |
zid...he described it in his video clip at the top of page 28 entitled...Are you hearing from God.
How can God be a person?
I see God as a person, an individual with a personality.
That is why what someone said, about not knowing if there is a true god but going ahead to believe it because to him believing is better than not believing, is kind. A person's feelings can be hurt. A quality is a measure, it is not life. God has life. Life can grow and prosper.
I have been denied existance on some forums. It really hurts to be imagined as nothing. Have you ever imagined how the personalities in heaven feel whenever anyone teaching heaven doesn't exist is exalted?
I believe heaven is occupied by personalities that are alive. And so the greatest personality is God because God gives life.
For me this is so simple. I look at the universe, the size of the dang thing, that it's infinite and expanding and that evolutionists/scientists argue this is all by chance etc etc. And for me that takes so massive a leap in 'faith', trusting in the enigma of how stuff can come from nothing and grow out into a space that wasn't there before that trusting to an intelligent being who is eternal seems a piece of [even a piece of birthday cake nowadays :D]
Creatures decided for themselves to grow eyes? How did they decide that? Decide it with what? But if they had brains enough for that task, are you sure they'd have enough grey cells to design the thing AND wire it all up right? What did they study to help draw up their plan? How could they know there was anything to see anyway? And, why are monkeys still here, not evolving into men like my clever uncle Marv? Why don't they get off their arses and get a job! Answers: there is a God and the buck stops with him.
[imo]
why are monkeys still here, not evolving into men
Oh sweetie...
Show that God is real, without mentioning the Bible. Alright, describe the solar system to me....... without mentioning the sun or the planets.
See what Jesus said in John 7:17.
You can look it up in http://www.biblegateway.com/ ... and if you cannot get the idea from the King James Version then may I suggest you use New International Version.
