Spiritual Forums

Home


Donate!


Articles


CHAT!


Shop


 
Welcome to Spiritual Forums!.

We created this community for people from all backgrounds to discuss Spiritual, Paranormal, Metaphysical, Philosophical, Supernatural, and Esoteric subjects. From Astral Projection to Zen, all topics are welcome. We hope you enjoy your visits.

You are currently viewing our boards as a guest, which gives you limited access to most discussions and articles. By joining our free community you will be able to post messages, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload your own photos, and gain access to our Chat Rooms, Registration is fast, simple, and free, so please, join our community today! !

If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, check our FAQs before contacting support. Please read our forum rules, since they are enforced by our volunteer staff. This will help you avoid any infractions and issues.

Go Back   Spiritual Forums > Spirituality & Beliefs > Spiritual Development

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #291  
Old 15-01-2019, 01:01 AM
Moonglow Moonglow is offline
Master
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: New York, USA
Posts: 3,591
  Moonglow's Avatar
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greenslade
Hi Moonglow

This is where we come to a very different understanding of Spirituality. The question of "What is Spirituality?" has been discussed in these hallowed forums before and as far as I'm aware there was never a conclusion. It seemed that it had more definitions than there were people to have those definitions. So you ask what trust is but what's happening in the answering of it? By default we go through a mind process to work out what trust is, yet for me there's still something inside that won't abide anything that comes from the mind. It's as though the Soul/Higher Mind won't suffer that fool of an egoic mind.

The trust just is and it's either in communion with you or not. For some reason I have to choose my words carefully here, it's something I feel I need to do. I don't have trust and it isn't a part of me, it seems as though it exists in its own right. It just is, I don't have trust because I am trust and yet trust is autonomous and exists in its own right.

If you had lived on a desert island would God exist? If a branch falls from a tree and there is nobody there to hear it would there still be a God? If you'd been brought up a strict Pagan how different would this discussion be? How differently might you be thinking if your parents had been Native American Indians?

There's another God thread that asks why God doesn't show himself and it's the same mentality that begins with God's existence as a fact. One of the suggestions was that God could say that he would turn the sky green for a day, and everybody would know that God existed and he had that power. I wonder how many people would say the aliens did it and not God at all?

God's existence is a belief and people can believe anything they like. I walked away from a car smash (I'm fine, no injuries by the way) and I'm having difficulty in believing that I walked away from it uninjured. I'm here to tell the tale but I can't believe that I survived. I can also make the choice to believe God exists despite everything else, including the possibility that the belief in God/Gods was hard-wired into my skull.

Twenty-nine pages of Spirituality and here's the irony of it all. Alan Watts said that if you are Spiritual, you are God playing at being not-God. That's classical, right there. Is that twenty-nine pages of so much technical and lyrical Spirituality and for all the words of wisdom we don't even know what we're talking about? Twenty-nine pages of talking about God when we're really talking about playing not God?


Hi Greenslade,

First off glad you survived the smash up. Hope you are healing well from the shock. Glad to see still around these parts.

Yes, we do have a different understanding, so it seems. I can only speak for myself and the way it comes to me at the moment. I don't hold on to much lately in regards to what is God or God existing for it seems to depend on ones view point in these matters.

The word "God" itself has been twisted anyways through the years. What was the original thought? I don't know. Like energy, don't know or brather can't explain exactly what it is, but can feel its effects. But, seems a very broad term in regards to what it may be and how it is experienced.

I mean is it the religiously formed God that seems portrayed as a fatherly figure head watching over us? Or is it presence of divine which by some termed as God.

"We are God playing at not being God." Love it. At times it seems some may try too hard at not being God and miss the point. The physical existence gets seperated from the Ethreal/Spirit existence with in us. The two are existing and creating this life being experienced.

Can believe and think what you like and even in these isn't there are reality formed? Doesn't this affect how things may be perceived and responded to?

So, to me it all blends and at times takes sorting through it, what holds true and what is just conjecture. Which is where bouncing around thoughts and experiences help to bring deeper understanding of each other and in return myself.

I was raised in the environment I was and it has it impact. I have not participated in ritual dances. Feel can not speak for others. The one God was placed into my psyche, but nature holds its Spirits and energy as well. Which upon pondering on this brings the thought that these are also divine. The hunter giving thanks to the animal killed, so the hunter can feed the family. Giving gratitude and for some in form of prayer connects one to the divine to nature.

So, it is with us as I feel it. Call it what you will or not at all does not stop the motions and flow of creation. Does not stop the heart from loving and feeling loss. Does not make life any more or less divine in and of itself.

I just feel this way. My choices may not always reflect feelings of joy and love, but I find myself returning to these when I open heart and calm my mind.

It is to the point where I am feeling the whole question is for one to figure out or not. For me it is what it is in the way it is being. How and what is thought about or felt just is myself trying to relate.

Thank you again
Reply With Quote
  #292  
Old 15-01-2019, 08:59 AM
Greenslade
Posts: n/a
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by iamthat
Love on an emotional level is conditional love, and can indeed turn into hate when conditions change. The emotional plane is a plane of duality (or the plane of polar opposites, same thing). But there is a higher unconditional love, which naturally arises from within, whatever the conditions.

Peace.
Unconditional Love is conditional just the same and unconditional Love only exists in relationship to conditional Love. Love is and that's all it is, but it's not something you understand from the perspective of knowledge or conceptualisation.


You can't use the intellect to understand what is beyond the intellect.
Reply With Quote
  #293  
Old 15-01-2019, 09:31 AM
JustBe JustBe is offline
Master
Join Date: Jun 2018
Posts: 3,251
  JustBe's Avatar
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greenslade
Unconditional Love is conditional just the same and unconditional Love only exists in relationship to conditional Love. Love is and that's all it is, but it's not something you understand from the perspective of knowledge or conceptualisation.


You can't use the intellect to understand what is beyond the intellect.

What is love?
Reply With Quote
  #294  
Old 15-01-2019, 09:33 AM
Greenslade
Posts: n/a
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by JustBe
What is love?
Love just is.
Reply With Quote
  #295  
Old 15-01-2019, 09:41 AM
JustBe JustBe is offline
Master
Join Date: Jun 2018
Posts: 3,251
  JustBe's Avatar
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greenslade
Love just is.

Just is what?
Reply With Quote
  #296  
Old 15-01-2019, 09:42 AM
JustBe JustBe is offline
Master
Join Date: Jun 2018
Posts: 3,251
  JustBe's Avatar
I am curious what your just is, is all about in you?
Reply With Quote
  #297  
Old 15-01-2019, 10:14 AM
Greenslade
Posts: n/a
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by janielee
The problem with these discussions is some people speak from God realization and others see it as a concept foistered on them.

Look in reality, if there is God, that God is unknowable, yet sense-able. In the world of talk and duality, the closest way to point to is some words. So we have words: God is as good as any of them. Words don't matter so much as the realization of God-ness. Something like that.
Alan Watts calls it "Atheism in the name of God," and it simply means the suspension of all beliefs and conclusions about what God is or isn't, because beliefs and conclusions come from an egoic mind that isn't supposed to be able to know God anyway - and those beliefs and conclusions also comes from the egoic mind. Yeah I know, it gets a bit bonkers, doesn't it?

Your reality is defined by your perceptions, your perceptions are defined by your beliefs and your beliefs are defined by your definitions so words are important because they create our reality. They are also a reflection of your paradigm, and God is a reflection of that paradigm. So yes, words do matter because they create your reality in which God exists in whatever shape or form that my take. And again it's back to the egoic mind.


The problem with these discussions is that few people have asked the right questions to begin with.
Reply With Quote
  #298  
Old 18-01-2019, 04:07 PM
Greenslade
Posts: n/a
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Moonglow
Hi Greenslade,

First off glad you survived the smash up. Hope you are healing well from the shock. Glad to see still around these parts.

Yes, we do have a different understanding, so it seems. I can only speak for myself and the way it comes to me at the moment. I don't hold on to much lately in regards to what is God or God existing for it seems to depend on ones view point in these matters.

The word "God" itself has been twisted anyways through the years. What was the original thought? I don't know. Like energy, don't know or brather can't explain exactly what it is, but can feel its effects. But, seems a very broad term in regards to what it may be and how it is experienced.

I mean is it the religiously formed God that seems portrayed as a fatherly figure head watching over us? Or is it presence of divine which by some termed as God.

"We are God playing at not being God." Love it. At times it seems some may try too hard at not being God and miss the point. The physical existence gets seperated from the Ethreal/Spirit existence with in us. The two are existing and creating this life being experienced.

Can believe and think what you like and even in these isn't there are reality formed? Doesn't this affect how things may be perceived and responded to?

So, to me it all blends and at times takes sorting through it, what holds true and what is just conjecture. Which is where bouncing around thoughts and experiences help to bring deeper understanding of each other and in return myself.

I was raised in the environment I was and it has it impact. I have not participated in ritual dances. Feel can not speak for others. The one God was placed into my psyche, but nature holds its Spirits and energy as well. Which upon pondering on this brings the thought that these are also divine. The hunter giving thanks to the animal killed, so the hunter can feed the family. Giving gratitude and for some in form of prayer connects one to the divine to nature.

So, it is with us as I feel it. Call it what you will or not at all does not stop the motions and flow of creation. Does not stop the heart from loving and feeling loss. Does not make life any more or less divine in and of itself.

I just feel this way. My choices may not always reflect feelings of joy and love, but I find myself returning to these when I open heart and calm my mind.

It is to the point where I am feeling the whole question is for one to figure out or not. For me it is what it is in the way it is being. How and what is thought about or felt just is myself trying to relate.

Thank you again
Hi there Moonglow


Thank you. It was a strange experience, the car smash. How we lived through it I really don't know, we should have been gone, and some of it seems to defy the laws of physics. We're just glad that the car was smashed up and not us.


We're supposed t have a different understanding of God though, if there was only one perception of God then God wouldn't be God and there wouldn't be any need for anyone else to be here. But if you don't hold onto things so much nowadays, what are the reasons for that? I think most people co to the stage when their priorities change. Sometimes beliefs aren't so important any more, and neither is butting heads with people trying to reinforce your beliefs. Really, that's what it's all about at the end of the day.


If you're really trying to understand what God is, ask yourself what you get out of your belief in God because that's what it comes down to. Often Spirituality has very little to do with Spirituality and everything to do with the frameworks of the mind and brain. Humans don't do anything for nothing so a belief in God means something, it has a benefit somewhere along the line.



That reminds me. I've been thinking of doing some research just out of curiosity, in particular the Gospel of Thomas. Apparently that particular gospel is supposed to be a list of things that Jesus said and not a personal narrative from anyone else. From the little I have seen of it, I don't remember many instances of Jesus using the word God. He certainly refers to him as 'Father' much of the time as far am my leaky memory goes, which reflects his relationship with God.


Sometimes it's all quite simple, Moonglow. We create our own realities and what we express of God is a reflection of our own consciousness. So many times that very simple thing has escaped people's awareness - or has it been ignored? Because when we talk about God we're not talking about God, we re talking about ourselves.


I was raised Christian in the most part, although my mother had a hatred of God and anything religious. She did allow me to make up my own mind though, and it was through they eyes of others that I saw God. I didn't like what I saw. One of the local vicars calls me his Christian atheist because of a discussion we had. It took him a little while to understand what I meant when I said that although I was an atheist I could still uphold many of the Christian values. That took a little processing on his part but he eventually worked it out.


So, thirty pages and counting and are we any closer to finding out the reasons God exists? Is there such a thing or is God something we cn't see ourselves as being? Or can we simply get on with our Lives?
Reply With Quote
  #299  
Old 18-01-2019, 09:24 PM
janielee
Posts: n/a
 
Two Friends

A certain person came to the Friend's door
and knocked.
"Who's there?"
"It's me."
The Friend answered, "Go away. There's no place
for raw meat at this table."

The individual went wandering for a year.
Nothing but the fire of separation
can change hypocrisy and ego. The person returned
completely cooked,
walked up and down in front of the Friend's house,
gently knocked.
"Who is it?"
"You."
"Please come in, my self,
there's no place in this house for two.
The doubled end of the thread is not what goes through
the eye of the needle.
It's a single-pointed, fined-down, thread end,
not a big ego-beast with baggage."

From Essential Rumi
by Coleman Barks
Reply With Quote
  #300  
Old 19-01-2019, 06:42 AM
iamthat iamthat is offline
Master
Join Date: Feb 2017
Location: Golden Bay, New Zealand
Posts: 3,580
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greenslade
Unconditional Love is conditional just the same and unconditional Love only exists in relationship to conditional Love. Love is and that's all it is, but it's not something you understand from the perspective of knowledge or conceptualisation.


You can't use the intellect to understand what is beyond the intellect.

Indeed. And unconditional love lies beyond the intellect which is why it cannot be understood. Conditional love pertains to personality, unconditional love is a quality of Soul.

If you believe that unconditional love is conditional just the same and only exists in relationship to conditional love then perhaps it is beyond your experience.

Peace.
Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 01:13 AM.


Powered by vBulletin
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
(c) Spiritual Forums