Some thoughts regarding your thoughts on the board tonight:

 

(TAudia -- I've probably overdone this, I always do. But I haven't been very creative in a while and I seem to be on one of my binges. I haven't been on a BBS in 9 years and the conversation evoked a lot of material (as well as fond memories). A friend of mine calls these "data dumps". Don't know what your background is, but you seem to be a very insightful person. What follows is the result of a 28 year search for Truth/God/Higher Power. Never the less its my Truth, as I have come to know it. Perhaps it is your Truth as well. If it is you heart will respond to it. For what we see outside is really a reflected image of who and what we are inside, at heart. In any event, there is only one Truth seen from an infinite number of perspectives. The best any of us can do is "compare" notes and try to integrate all views into one view by seeking to see the common thread that runs through each. Pardon the spelling it 0130 and time for bed)

 

1) The Christian God is The One God -- Absolute, Infinite, Eternal; Transcendent, Immanent and Incarnate. However, this One God can be seen from many other perspectives -- Moslems see Him as Allah, Hindu's see Him as Brahma; philosopher's see Him as Truth, Taoist see Himr as Tao, Native American's see Him as the Great Spirit. Vedantists call Him Pure Consciousness, the Self, the Heart of Awarness. Call Him Higher Power, Whatever, but call Him and call Him as often as you can. (You can even substitute Him/Her for all the Hims if you wish)

 

2) There are not many Gods, rather there are many different ways of seeing and so relating to the one God. Perhaps an old metaphor will help:

 

1. Mountain: Truth (or God/Higher Power) may be likened to a mountain which offers different views from different sides and elevations. While all views are relatively true, none are absolutely true. Thus the relative merit of any particular view must be judged solely on the basis of how much mountain it is able to embrace. The wider one ranges and the higher one climbs, the broader and more encompassing individual perspectives are likely to become. Higher understanding results from higher and broader perspectives. Higher views necessarily include and transcend lower views. Only one view, however, may include and transcends all others -- the entire mountain as seen from the summit's all inclusive perspective. 

 

3) A Christian is one who believes that Christ, the Presence of God, lives in the heart of all men ("Know ye not that ye are the Temple of the Living God?"; "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."); that we are all Children of God and Brothers and Sisters in Christ.

 

4) Does a Christian go to church? Some do, some don't. If you yourself are the "Temple" your walk around in church everyday. If your are remembering God, in that moment and in that place you are in church. If your are focused and attending to worldly matters and not remembering God, you are not in church, irregardless of what building you may be in.

 

5) We as human beings all judge because that is the nature of the egocentric state of mind we are in. I judge everything, whether it be a physical, mental or emotional condition, in terms of whether it is good or bad for me, whether I like it or dislike it, whether it pleases or displeases me, whether it can hurt me or help me (the "knowledge of the tree of Good and Evil."). And my standard, my referent for all these continuous judgements I make is my limited, partial and incomplete perspective of both the World and Myself. 

 

6) Aren't we supposed to become like God? We all have a seed potential to be perfect self-expressions of God. The degree to which we bring that seed to fruition is a function of our understanding and knowledge of who and what we are in Him. Jesus understanding was perfect and as a result his Man-I-festation of God was Perfect. The same can be said for Buddha and Krishna. They became Spiritual Red Wood Trees -- Masters, Adepts, Giants -- perfect models for the rest of us. We, on the other hand, have just started to grow roots, or perhaps have reached the sapling stage. Never-the-less the difference is only one of degree, not kind. The key to our growth is our fundamental recognition of God's Fatherhood and our Sonship, claiming that relationship, and then acting upon it.

 

7) We know God has forgiven us because we still continue to exist. We have life and being because he remembers us and thinks of us constantly. Were he for one moment to stop thinking of us (giving us his full attention and thus loving us) we would simply cease to be. Neither does God see us as we see ourselves. He sees us as he first envisioned us, Whole, Perfect and Complete, in our Eternal and Transcendent Nature (the Buddhists' call It True Nature). Pure Light cannot behold darkness, only a state of mind in which there is a partial absence of light (and presence of ignorance) can know darkness.

 

8) One of the best definitions of sin I have ever read is that sin is "a belief" in separation from God (not a real separation, for how can anything truly be separate from an Absolute, Eternal and Infinite state or condition of Being?, but a BELIEF). This false belief (symbolized in the Bible as "a knowledge of the Tree of Good and Evil.) is the false premise upon which all of "natural man's" logic and action is based. And as you know with computers "garbage in garbage out." If the premise is flawed then all the conclusions and actions that flow from that premise must be equally imperfect. 

 

9) Perfection must come from within because you can only know yourself "inside-out" (all other knowledge leaves out the inside and so is partial, incomplete and imperfect). Thus I can know one thing and one thing only perfectly, and that is "myself" (that is why meditation is so important -- it's away of getting in touch with the Real You; the very Ground of your Being). Only the knowledge of identity, of oneness, can be whole and complete. Once I have known myself completely, however, once I have experienced the innate oneness of my own being, I may just learn how to experience my world in a similarly non-linear (quantum) manner.

 

10) I don't believe we are "reborn", because I don't think we ever really die. I think we as souls were born in the moment that God conceived us in an Infinite burst of Light. Are you reborn each morning to a new day, and do you die each night when you go to sleep? In a very real sense, you are alive to the degree to which you are conscious and aware of being in any given moment. Seen in these light each of us manifest varying degrees of life or death, depending on how conscious or unconscious we are in any given moment. When we are asleep we are pretty much dead to ourselves--self-forgotten, as it were. In truth, when I am thinking I am relatively dead to my life, and when I am not thinking I am that much more alive to life. 

 

11) I wouldn't worry too much about reincarnation. One life is more than enough for most of us and even too much for many others. The point of life is always "now". Living each and every moment fully. Giving yourself completely to whatever that moment calls you to do. Thinking about yesterday and projecting tomorrow only cause us to miss the vertical dimension to life that some have called the Eternal Here and Now. Double your present awareness in and of each moment and double your life (and joy, as well). Think about past moments, let alone past lives, and you will "miss the mark" (another definition for sin).

 

12) Awareness is who and what we all are. Going a little further, I would say that each of us is a growing center of conscious awareness (like the ever expanding circular ripple that a rock thrown into a still lake makes) becoming increasingly aware of the full extent of our being. As such we are all like "mathematical points" in an Absolute Field of Awareness -- expanding centers growing outward towards a limitless circumference -- and in so doing coming to encompass the full extent of our limitless potential to be. Awareness is not only around and through us, it is us, at our most essential level. Its who I Am. Its who we all are at Heart.

 

13) We license and franchise externalities to effect the inner state of our beings. My mind and emotions should be sovereign territory in which I am the soul lord and master. The world may be able to touch my body, but only my mind if I occupy it with worldly thoughts and concerns. I become conditioned to depend on my circumstances to evoke changes that only happen inside me -- to change conditions or states of my own consciousness. I do this be cause I have been conditioned since childhood to do this. The answer, of course lies in mental self-discipline and control; in mastering my self, instead of trying to master the world. I can't change the world, but I should be able to change myself. I can't have infinite supply under my current circumstances, but I can work towards zero demand. 

 

14) When I said that there was only One Subject, I was responding to StrssdOut's question "Can there be an objective reality, a reality apart and independent of any observer?" In this regard, the object and subject arise mutually. Just as in and out, up and down, on and off are polar extremes or two ends of the same stick. You just can't have one without the other. An even better illustration is a sine curve, or vibratory pattern of energy. All such vibratory patterns are really an ongoing sequence of ons and offs, pluses and minuses, zeros and ones. They appear not only to be two, but diametrically opposed (the very presence of one precludes the simultaneous existence of the other). Yet what happens when the field or space in which this apparent duality ceases to vibrate, becomes still and unmoving again? Does it not return to its original oneness simply by ceasing to move. In truth, was said field ever really two in the first place, or did it just seem so as a function of the illusion of duality that the temporary movement/vibration in the field created.

 

15) If God is Absolute, He/She/It is everywhere present and absolutely conscious. When I said the One Subject, I was not referring to the "subject" of observation, but rather the "subject or central identity" eyeing/"I"ing itself from the innermost heart of all. Quite simply if God is One, He is absolutely indivisible (the True Atom) and so all consciousness, all awareness, all being, all reality, all life, or any other essential quality you choose to name, must remain one with that all originating Source. Thus if I have a sense of "central identity" or self, my fundamental sense of "Isness",that too must be arising from and ever returning to the "Central Identity" or "Self" of God (Eternal Energy of the Universe, Ground of Being, or Universal Field if you choose not to personify), or Christ, the Person of God; the Great I AM (the First Person Singular of the Present Tense to Be). That is the One Subject of which each of us are reflected images (though connected as a ray of light to the Sun that it originates from and the field of light to which it returns and from which it can never be parted) 

 

16) Good never defeats evil, because they are never at war. Good is like Light (of awareness) and evil like darkness (of ignorance). Does the Light fight with the darkness, is it threatened by its own relative absence? Turn on a light in a dark room. Does a battle ensue or is darkness immediately vanquished by Light's very presence. As they said in Alice in Wonderland, Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dee agreed to have a "mock" battle. So too the dance of the Light and the Dark, the Positive and the Negative condition, the One and the Many. There are not two powers, there is only one power pretending to be two through a process of "self-ignorance", a bit like placing a hand over one eye causes one to lose sight and sense of "half the field" of ones vision. Where did the field go? No where it's still right there. Only your conscious awareness of it has changed. Actually, the dark is only the condition that arises when the "light of awareness" is similarly blocked in our minds by the egocentric way we have been conditioned to feel, sense and think things. 

 

17) Dreams are the language in which the subconscious and subterranean portions of the "full field" of our awareness communicates with us. The portion of our consciousness that we have denied and driven underground.

 

18) If we choose darkness over light, evil over goodness, it simply attests to our fundamental ignorance of the Light. For if there were full disclosure, if we had perfect knowledge of the Light (and the Infinite Joy and Bliss it implies), the choice would be so obvious as to be no choice at all. As such, we can only consider choosing darkness (the negative condition that arises in lights absence) from a position of relative ignorance or unconsciousness of the Light.

 

19) Spirit being Awareness, Consciousness, Space is everywhere present -- the medium in which we live, move and have our being (much in the way a fish lives, moves and has its being in water.) Spirit may also be viewed as Universal Mind and man's mind as a localized manifestation of that Mind. (re. the Universal can only act in and through localized manifestations of itself on the Plane of the Particular). In other words, we're all CRTs linked in to a Cosmic Mainframe (a main frame with a capacity to create Virtual Reality on a Cosmic Scale). RichFH

 

Copyright, RFHay, 1996