with many strong feelings or beliefs either way for christianity, atheism, jw would you be willing to die for your beliefs, or are they just feelings that never come from the heart?
if faced with death for your beliefs, would you?.
abr.
Considering that beliefs are only mind generated abstracts and concepts, it seems foolish to die for them. Of course there are people who would blow themselves and others to bits, in the beliefs they will inherit a harem full of virgins.
On second thought. Let me rethink this.
j
and those who go with... the greatest of love and peace to you!
very soon now, we will again have opportunity to publicly declare our sonship, (re)ratify our covenant with god, and eat from the tree of life!
from the founding of the world, there have been those whose aim is to persuade us from it, either through lies or through exploitation of our own imperfections.
As we have determined before, we share a similar sense, but then there is a huge rift:
I agree that words and beliefs separate, dear JT, not mistakenly, however, but in fact.
You believe that the Divine is in some way limited that we can in "fact" be separate from it. There is no place other than within That which has no beginning and no end. But it's understandable that this is impossible to see when you have shrunken our infinite Source down to a deity.
You give great credence to the images and objects which seem to appear before you as your god. Many have such visions. Some people go out a kill because their vision told them to. What manifests as a small and separate object before us can be due to any number of mental malfunctions, beliefs and disease. What is important is not what is seen or heard, but rather what is seeing. Everything experienced could be a dream; the only undeniable truth and reality there is, is what is closer than all objective things: conscious-awareness. What awaits at the foundational depths of the only pool of truth and reality we have?
You're lost in a drama of gods and deities you see dancing across your mind. I'm attempting to point to what all movement dances within. What is it that UNCONDITIONALLY holds all life and universes, no matter how seemingly sinful or righteous???
You keep championing a separation that requires a reuniting. I point to a Unity that is always here, ALWAYS, we just don't see it. You don't see unity in some, so you make disunity real and in the process make God into a limited thing. It's not God which is limited and so giving way to an actual separation, it's simply our foolish vision that makes it seem so. The weakness is ours, not God's.
What is here, dear, when the grand drama in your mind is quiescent? What is here, whole and complete, when all mind generated beliefs, ideas and images are absent? What stands eternal? That you don't see it, doesn't make it absent.
Next time your god visits you, have him give you an eye examination....and if he has eyes that can not see what eternally and always unites us one and all, then you give him one too.
j
and those who go with... the greatest of love and peace to you!
very soon now, we will again have opportunity to publicly declare our sonship, (re)ratify our covenant with god, and eat from the tree of life!
from the founding of the world, there have been those whose aim is to persuade us from it, either through lies or through exploitation of our own imperfections.
Dear Shelby, I have been attracted to your posts all these years because I like you.
Perhaps you should just consider me a lost cause, dear JT, and give me up to my God and my beliefs.
There is a lot of suffering in the world; and much of it can be attributed to beliefs of the Divine as somehow separate from our own authentic be-ing. Believing in this mistaken disunity, our wholeness shatters and is painfully stolen away. Our ultimate and foundational significance is mistakenly seen to be a separate thing; a detached junk out in space and time somewhere; a limited and circumscribable object, deity or personage so small as to be defined by a name. Only in our mind's beliefs of what "God" is, and what "we" are, is endless perfection broken and the blood ooze.
Your language Shelby, seems to me to strongly support separation as you reduce what is important to a nameable object set apart from our most intimate existence and conscious-being. This disunited divide is a lie. It is the biggest and most harmful lie ever told. What the word G-O-D points to is NOT so diminutive as to be separate or absent from our own true Identity and genuine Self. We are not what we believe ourselves to be.
I know what you really are Shelby, you can not be a lost cause. It is only words and beliefs that mistakenly separate and divide us and cause much suffering that I address....not you, dear one.
j
and those who go with... the greatest of love and peace to you!
very soon now, we will again have opportunity to publicly declare our sonship, (re)ratify our covenant with god, and eat from the tree of life!
from the founding of the world, there have been those whose aim is to persuade us from it, either through lies or through exploitation of our own imperfections.
Abr, you are very kind ; especially considering how I have been hard on you at times. The Bible is not bad, it can be a stepping stone. The problem is that all too often it instead becomes a prison which supports very restrictive and limited idea of the Divine which separates us into the chosen and the damned; and this causes much unnecessary harm and suffering.
I suggest that as time goes on, and if it feels right, you let go of anything and everything the diminished the Divine (our ultimate and foundational significance) in any way, or seems to shrink it to some object or entity far away and separate from our own deepest and vibrant sense of being and existing. What the word G-O-D points to, is always more, and never less; always closer and never farther away. You'll see.
j
when i was a jw, my idea of worshipping god was to put in at least 10+ hrs.
in fs monthly, attend 5 mtgs per wk, study for those meetings, make back calls (or what is now called rv's), conduct bible studies, have a family study once a week, pioneer when able, go to all the assemblies, etc.
what, if anything, do you consider worship?.
I no longer reduce the Divine to a book, or some thing so small as to be separate and apart from this very moment of conscious-existence. So, worship simply becomes life; which unfolds as less concern for the minds interpritations and beliefs, and more silent and acute presence with reality here and now.
j
and those who go with... the greatest of love and peace to you!
very soon now, we will again have opportunity to publicly declare our sonship, (re)ratify our covenant with god, and eat from the tree of life!
from the founding of the world, there have been those whose aim is to persuade us from it, either through lies or through exploitation of our own imperfections.
Abr, I am not at all coming from the warm dank dungeon of psychological self-flagellation that your beloved Bible provides for you. Quite the antithesis.
Being One with the Divine, we are in reality whole and complete already (just beneath the broken and diseased "self" we believe ourselves to be). There is nothing we need earn. Nothing to do or become. No rituals to perform. No god to appease. No self flagellation required. We just need to silently look past our wounded beliefs, and deeper into the actuality of our most intimate and immediate sense of being and existing.
j
and those who go with... the greatest of love and peace to you!
very soon now, we will again have opportunity to publicly declare our sonship, (re)ratify our covenant with god, and eat from the tree of life!
from the founding of the world, there have been those whose aim is to persuade us from it, either through lies or through exploitation of our own imperfections.
Nice to see you Shelby.
When a fire-fighter saves your life, they do not need nor require any ritualistic requisite of any kind. Why is it you think that your cherished idea of the Divine is less loving and more limited and conditional than the fire-fighter who saved your ass unconditionally at the risk of his or her own life? Why is the fire-fighter more Christ-like than your JAHESHUA MISCHAJAH, the Holy One of Israel, Son and Christ of the Most Holy One of Israel, JAH… of Armies, who needs some form of worship, admiration or ritualistic hoops jumped through before he does anything?
Is it God which is somehow less loving and less moral than the fire-fighter, or is it just your idea of a god which is so painfully small? Why do you continually belittle and reduce the Divine to some thing so diminutive as to require anything from us at all? Is it because you need a conditional god that you may set yourself up as some shining slave and prophetess who is somehow special where others are not?
Doesn't it make more sense that if we are all ONE with God, then that will be realized, no matter what we do, or don't do. No conditions. No strings. No nothing. Now that, is LOVE. But then, this would make you and the Bible readers of the world no more deserving and special than anyone else.
You will get a better understanding of what I am attempting to convey if you focus on what unites us all unconditionally, rather than on what divides us. But it will cost you that special place you think you have in God's eyes. It will cost you your ego.
j
i ask this because as a jw, you are programmed to think your only purpose is to preach the good news of the kingdom....period.
but more and more, i've noticed in my own life a strong pull toward something i won't elaborate on, but it has me thinking that maybe we really do each have a particular purpose and it's up to us to discover what it is.
i know i'm kind of new to the forum, but please let me know if any of you have experienced this same kind of unusually strong pull toward something you can't fully explain.
Personally, I would not use the phrase "killing the ego"; and perhaps should have expressed it differently than: "when the ego dies".
It's more about gently and patiently viewing the mind as it weaves it's little ego, or false patch-work identity. When it is clearly seen, it loses it's power. It will show up periodically, but you know what it is, and it's OK.
j
i ask this because as a jw, you are programmed to think your only purpose is to preach the good news of the kingdom....period.
but more and more, i've noticed in my own life a strong pull toward something i won't elaborate on, but it has me thinking that maybe we really do each have a particular purpose and it's up to us to discover what it is.
i know i'm kind of new to the forum, but please let me know if any of you have experienced this same kind of unusually strong pull toward something you can't fully explain.
Journey, we are very close here, and I do not really disagree with anything you said, it's just that there is a little deeper we can go here that dissolves the entire concept of duality.
Go deep enough, investigate thoroughly enough, and it can be clearly seen that it is not that God created us, and then there is an us creating other things or being creative. There is God manifesting....period. There is no us as anything separate and apart from That. There is no purpose, or goal, other than the wonder of this moment. The only reality there is.
Perhaps it's just a semantics problem.
It may look as if I am splitting hairs, but it is extremely easy to remain lost in the mind-generated-believed-self, the false self. The mind tenaciously weaves an identity out of desires and dreams, goals and purposes, fears and beliefs. It's extremely easy to get lost in space, time, and purpose; and so find ourselves reaching out into a illusory tomorrow which steals away the present moment of existence.
This does not mean we stop creating or doing things. I am in the middle of developing a new consumer product which will take many, many months yet of hard work. Life goes on. The universe unfolds. It's just there is not a isolated little "me" here -- who is doing it or has a purpose.
When the false ego dies, and the true Self realized, it is seen that you are all existence, everything, just no particular thing. You'll see.
j
if you could have been one of the apostles, would you have given up everything you have today to follow jesus?.
.
No. I could not dishonor and subtract Divinity out of the entire universe and shrink it down in some specific little man that I could worship him as god.
j
Edited to add: That said, if he was willing to truly honor That which has no beginning and no end, I would have met with him as a beloved brother.
