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On Faith

  
  

Page: 12(3)

 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
18:42 / 14.02.06
Am finding this thread fascinating. Lovely stuff iconoplast, and bloody brave in your initial post.

I don't have very much experience in much of what is being discussed here, but this caught my eye:

(As an aside: What about pleasure? Where does this come into it? Perhaps it is here to "balance out" this kind of service? That might be the "fucking around playing video games").

Illmatic, responding to your questions about why you're still smoking, and not 'saving the world'.

One angle on this, is that much of what is wonderful to me about what you've written here is that your faith seems to have been about activism and positive change. Firstly, in yourself, in enormous and vital, and frankly astonshing ways.

Now, you're talking about going out in to the world.

It might be worth considering that there are a million ways to make a positive impact on the world, and that you may not understand why what you're doing now is in line with that, but that doesn't mean it's not happening.

(My posish on faith is complicated and mainly irrelevant, and so at the beginning/allowing that process but lets just say that I was entirely agnostic, and I'm certainly not any more)

I have seen this in my own life, and as per the above, and not sure how I would interpret this/where I might seek to connect it to my 'beliefs'

However, as someone else who has and is working really hard to heal themselves, move in the right directions, I am able with retrospect to see what looked like a jumble/hopeless mess of jobs, relationships, bad habits etc has been part of the material that has led me to where I am. To a place where I am, as of this moment, fucking proud of some things I am doing.

That slowly, I'm needing the 'bad habits' a bit less/some have disappeared.

I bring up the 'activist' tag as in the circles where I have known activists, the phenomena of 'burnout' is much discussed. Perhaps you are being helped to avoid that one?
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
18:54 / 14.02.06
I wonder if they have these problems in the Head Shop?

Yes.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
21:38 / 14.02.06
iconoplast...

Now what's weird is that, once I started to believe that there was a god, and worked on some kind of acceptance of that belief, I was hit with a whammy of a question, which I'm still working out. If there is an ommniscient omnibenevolent omnipotent deity who loves me and accepts me and wants the best for me, what the hell am I doing fucking around playing video games and smoking a pack a day?

That is a vital question.

Shouldn't I be giving all my worldly posessions away and working in a soup kitchen in Uganda?

Or similar...What else is there to do? Satisfy the appetites of ego? Well, yes! I am facing very similar questions myself at the moment...What to do with this apparent 'understanding'...I think it's important to be aware that knowing you face this choice, and make it, freely, and conscious of its possibility, is a fairly large step in and of itself. To seriously consider your options, without external influence, because the impetus is in you and comes from inside...this is a freedom, of sorts, and a very healthy one to exercise and consider, daily.

I'm really at a loss as to how to bring my faith into the world with me - such an idealist faith, and such an imperfect understanding of the universe just don't seem to fit with how the world is, or with the plans I have for my life, or the things I'm trying to do.

The entire system is connected at every point, so healing yourself and being as tai chi as possible, zero in the centre, transforming all direction and movement that is encountered into zero, and then love, compassion, non-attachment and non-judgement is no less nor more noble than canning your life in Babylon and heading out to join Medicine Sans Frontieres or whatever...Chaos, the butterfly effect, these things are highly likely. Life goes on, and how you interact with it ripples out through eternity, every thought and feeling and emotion and moment. Life, God, Tao etc. is always and already expressing, arising and shining in every fraction of every moment, unstoppable, immense, to taste it for even a moment, a fraction of insight into this very rising moment NOW!...it's mind buggering. And you are part of it, and it is perfect. Because if it isn't, then what is?

Wouldn't volunteering with terminally ill children be better than going for my PhD?

Who can answer such questions? You lack the necessary insight and foresight. Although you are an expression of the Godhead, you are not, yourslef, omniscient. You stick by an intention, and check your heart, and the path unfolds, and you walk it. Always checking your heart, which knows. The signal, I have found, is always present, but it is unobtrusive and very discrete. Ego is the opposite. It takes diligence and practice and ruthless honesty - ruthless - to avoid the deceptions of that structure, which is something I have referred to elsewhere as the Adversary, and the Deceiver. It knows every ploy ever or yet to be to add momentum to its own currency and inertia. It wants to live for ever, it refuses to accept impermanence, or its own inevitable doom, or even its own non-existence outside of these games. The games are it's existence, which is why it has learned to be so adept and skilled at maintaining them, constantly.

Your constant utilization of thought is all that creates and maintains a sense of 'you' at all. Says I. Without that thought, or those thoughts, you are simply not there.

If I'm full, and I have one more cookie - shouldn't I have spent that money feeding someone hungry?

Probably, yes. Work out a way to do this, or move towards it's contribution in some way.

There's this moral-ethical mandate that's rooted in my faith that I just don't know what to do with. I'm not ready to wear a paper dress and hand out flowers at the airport, but I do want to take my faith seriously and engage with it and live some kind of spiritual life.

So how do you go about bringing spirituality or faith with you when you're in the world?

All the cliches, I guess. Boundless compassion, equal love for your fellow beings, attention to what is going on and the Signal, a cleared space of busy forgetfulness to pay attention to what is, right now, right in front of you. A serious, sincere intention to avoid becoming entangled in the causation or perpetuation of suffering, even if that means the sacrifice of satisfaction of every appetite your ego has accumulated over the years, a serious, committed dedication to examination of your conscience and action upon the results of such examination. You know, the usual.

Sounds like you're doing alright to me.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
21:40 / 14.02.06
Although, Quit smoking!

Seriously. :-)
 
 
illmatic
08:32 / 15.02.06
Something I didn't add above - slipped my mind. One of the best things I've got out of my practice over the last few years is self-compassion. Cultivating the ability to let myself off the hook over my human weaknesses and bad points, and not indulging in unproductive guilt and self-flagellation (this incidentally is why I hate the meditation regimes of Crowley and other Western mages).

I think this is the way towards real change, rather than beating yourself into submission. If I find myself feeling guilty or forcing myself to do things, it's a mental red flag up to look further at the situation. Possibly this relates to your situation, in that there's nothing wrong with having a doss, being lazy or indulgent for a while. It's okay.

Also, once you discover compassion in yourself, it's easier to find and direct towards other people. It sounds like a hideous hippy abstraction but I geninuely believe it's changed me for the better.
 
 
Unconditional Love
11:42 / 15.02.06
The deciever , the adversary, id be intrested to hear how you relate to the tempter(s) and how as an experience it plays a part of your faith.

My experience came with a revelation, the tempter is of god, those that serve it are of god, and only god knows the reason(s) why, even the deciever serves god, bound by the blindness of its own self absorbtion, its rebellion actually acts as a leash. The devils serve god.

Fear is the first hurdle, they will use every appetite within you to keep you in there thrall, thats not to say the appetites are bad, but they can be used to manipulate you.

I dont see it so much as testing faith, but as strenghtening faith and the responsibility that comes as the power of that faith grows.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
12:49 / 15.02.06
Undulating Spine - I think you are right, as in I agree with you essentially, though I'm not sure if 'serves' is the term I would use...I'll come to that a bit later, with more time. Interesting points, but I'm at work, and busy!

Cultivating the ability to let myself off the hook over my human weaknesses and bad points, and not indulging in unproductive guilt and self-flagellation

It's interesting, actually, Ill, that the section of the Lord's Prayer translated from Greek as 'Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us' is very much about exactly this, though not quite so obviously from the Greek translation, I find:

Washboqlan khaubayn wakhtahayn aykanna daph khnan shbwoqan l'khayyabayn

Loosen the cords of mistakes binding us, as we release the strands we hold of other's guilt, binding them to us.
Forgive our hidden past, the secret shames, as we consistently forgive what others hide.
Lighten our load of secret debts as we relieve others of their need to repay.
Erase the inner marks our failures make, just as we scrub our hearts of other's faults, and free them as we are freed.
Absorb our frustrated hopes and dreams, as we embrace those of others with emptiness and silence.
Untangle the knots within so that we can mend our hearts' simple, loving ties to others.
Compost our inner, stolen fruit as we forgive others the spoils of their trespassing.
Loose the cords of mistakes binding us, as we release the strands we hold of others' guilt.

So beautiful. Lighten our load of secret debts as we relieve others of their need to repay. That's the ticket.

It's interesting to note here as well that the word translated from Aramaic-Hebrew-Greek as 'will', as in 'Thy will be done' is from this:

Nehwey tzevyanach aykanna d'bwashmaya aph b'arha

But the relevant word tzevyanach has a meaning far closer to 'heart's desire' than 'will' understood as 'willpower' or forceful intention or whatever. It refers to an Aramaic concept extremely close in essence to our best friend Wu Wei. That thread is well worth a read for anyone who is unfamiliar with the Taoist and Buddhist notion of 'not doing'. Essentially, having something so ingrained as part of yourself, so much a part of you, so inseperable from you, that you are it, and you need not make any effort to achieve its highest expression...in fact, just the opposite, 'you' have to get out of the way completely, and let 'it' express 'itself'.

Arha is the word for Earth, here, and may even be the original source for it, etymologically. It's roots also relate back to the Hebrew root AR- meaning strength from rooting and power arising from firmament, from which we get our word ardor. It roots the entire process of allowing Divine Hearts Desire (tzevyanach) to express through the space we have cleared within to intend co-creation with Abwoon, the Holy Birthing Process, the Father-Mother of the Cosmos, within d'bwashmaya, the extant possibilities of all form and all light, in all times and all places, arising and shining in space, which we are able to recognise by our apprehension of the Universe we are in, the perfection surrounding us and which we are, all of us.

Man, I love that.
 
 
iconoplast
13:59 / 15.02.06
M. Scott Peck (Author of The Road Less Travelled) wrote a book called People of The Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil.
(UK link here)
I remember it as being pretty good. In it, he describes a psychological diagnosis of Evil, based on something to do with lying - I don't remember. What I do remember is that the last chapter was about the adversary. And he said something like 'Just as belief in God comes from an experience of God, the same holds true for the adversary - you won't believe in him until you've met him.'

And, while that line frightened me deeply, I still don't really have a place for an adversary in my cosmology. My unchecked will, my instincts gone awry, and my own ability to get in the way of my life, misinterpret and overreact and misprioritize things is adversary enough, and all the power of an omnipotent deity feels some days like barely enough to get my shoes on the right feet. If I added a nearly omnipotent adversary, I'd probably cry.

On the other hand, an out of ontext quote from Jung I picked up somewhere - that whenever we are presented with an opportunity for positive growth, our shadow will manufacture an opposing choice - that feels very much in line with my experience. Many of the times I've been on the verge of doing something great and new in my life (e.g., meet new girl who, for once, is stable and sane and good), I manufacture a choce in the opposite direction (but the girl I pined over in high school is around! And she's just out of the psychward! And she's not ready to date!). That kind of thing.

Somewhere between my own sense of alienation from god's will, and my ability to pick he worst possible decision from any set of choces, I've got adversary enough on my plate. However, I do keep in mind what Peck wrote, and try to remember that perhaps the ability to not believe in a sentient adversary is, in fact, a blessing.
 
 
Unconditional Love
16:27 / 23.02.06
I have this thing going on in me, what seems to be happening is, my minds fills up with the voices of decievers, generally things that are self destructive and harmful to my person and body.

Yesterday it started to get so bad i began to pray, and these things were cast from me by my prayers, i basically requested gods protection, and it was given. I went from being hyper angry and stressed to being peaceful calm and tranquil within a period of minutes.

I have started reading the gnostic gospels of late and have been allowing the words to become me as best i can, this seems to be providing me so far with a firm foundation for something to begin to grow in.

The most curious sensation was bringing god into my body, i was literally filled with something so real and solid, yet so calm and peaceful that i didnt want to move.

I didnt sleep as well as i would of liked, but i put that down to the radio and too much ginseng and caffine.

I am thinking of making regular prayer to god as a part of my practice, i feel really well today. I am also thinking this may well be the year for me to start learning to sing again.
 
 
Unconditional Love
12:23 / 24.02.06
Ok, again last night, more prayer for a calm and restful mind, basically i am allowing my awareness of god to grow, first in my breath, then in my body, then in the space around me, then in my thoughts, then in my feelings and spirit.

Easy to sleep and easy to wake.

Today on the bus i had a kind of trance like awareness take me, it was basically that we are all gods children, no matter what our mood or condition. It was as if everything began to fill with light and smile at me, especially people as if they caught the same feeling and presence, really beautiful. Its not the first time but its been alongtime since i felt that way.

I like the way that god conspires to show me the feeling of equanimity occasionally, so all the conscious differences and judgements i create are seen for what they are, socially useful deceptions.
 
 
Claris Dancers
15:22 / 24.02.06
Undulating spine, what is your conception of god? What i mean is, what do you think of when you think of "god?" Is it the judeo-christian god? something else? monotheistic? poly? What does "awareness of god" mean? What are you aware of? Physical sensations like tinglings, buzzing, something similar? something else entirely?
 
 
Unconditional Love
13:56 / 25.02.06
Well my body fills with peace and calm and tranquilty, so does my mind so does my breath, and as i direct this presence so does the environment around me, and i feel very protected, as if held by the feelings.

My body feels very soild, very real and i have a greater awareness of it, yet it also feels heavier, but very alive.

I concieve of god as being god. Their isnt really any other way i can put it. Its a he, and i will address him as christ, which is a warmer feeling.

Basically i lay with my hands in the common prayer position and ask for gods protection, to cleanse and purify me of evil in my life and the lives of my friends.

I locate god in my breath by being aware of my breath, then my body by bringing my awareness to each part of myself and then in a very similar way to the LBRP i locate god around me, then i identify god with all the thoughts within me, and then i address what i concieve to be within me with prayer.

I think the focus on the body is important for me as it reminds me that god is the flesh of creation, and in that sense so is the focus on each other part to understand that god is included in all aspects of the self and is also the environment, in that fashion god becomes the uniting principality between all parts.

Every part of me becomes united in god, who is understood to be all things. It seems to work rather well for me.
 
 
Unconditional Love
14:08 / 25.02.06
I have at points practiced the LBRP and of late Various tantric buddhist meditations, i seem to have somehow fused them with my early years as a child loving to sing hymns and pray, that being my favourite part of all my schooling until i went to secondary school and from the third year learnt r.e, which i had a great teacher for.

It may also have something to do with ancestry from my mothers side, methodists, presbytarians,temperence society, evangelical christian preachers etc.

I have been in denial of all my feelings towards the simple notion of god for years, some due to my fathers influence, atheist communist, and some due to my own rebellion,any spirituality other than a christian one, as was the cool when i teenaged into my late 20s. I cant actually be fucked to be anything other than what i feel i am anymore, and that is somebody with a firm belief in god.

I respect every other thing ive been in contact with and have learnt alot which i still employ in my practice, but it just isnt me, been trying desperately to be somebody else for far too long.
 
 
kaonashi
07:39 / 28.02.06
I was reading the Wikipedia article on Gnosticism and I was struck by something that Jung thought.

Basically he thought that some gnostics were using the symbology of a gnostic belief system as a model for understanding the division of the self?

I think thats the basic idea.

So Bythos (greek for deep) was the original unknowable source of creation, and then Samael(?) would be the blind, possibly evil, creator god.

I realize that you are all familiar with these concepts, I was just trying to work through some of them for myself.

In all my struggles with Christianity I never lost a belief in a tempter figure, I found it easier to believe in demonic archetypes than a Christian God.

I find the idea of mapping Bythos onto the subconscious, and Samael onto the ego an interesting proposition.

That being said there is still very much I just don't have any idea about, much deeper than I'm willing to go right now.

Good thread iconoplast, and very interesting responses.
 
 
iconoplast
13:47 / 01.03.06
Thanks, scarboi. For the record, this thread is pretty much all things I don't have any idea about. So don't feel shy about posting.

A while ago, I read a book called The Gnostic Jung, which was (shockingly) about Jung and Gnosticism, his exposure to it, and its appearances in his work. It was really good, pretty fun, and it ended up affecting me more than I thought.

The imagery of some of the Gnostic prayers is really awe-inspiring, and when you sort of filter it through Jung, you get this cool cosmology that has a way of being mapped into contemporary experience.

And, through the psychoanalysis, the Gnostic stuff somehow permeated its way into my belief structure.

Just, I don't know... the idea of something behind the world of our senses, the idea of lost purity, and the idea of a uncategorizable, undivided godhead. Plus, it lets me act as though I believed in an Adversary, without stumbling over the theological implications of one.

That thing Jung said (I think) to the effect that every time we reach a turning point in our lives and have an opportunity for spiritual growth, our Shadow (i.e., our internalized Adversary) manufactures an opposing choice gets to work in my worldview because of the whole Jungian gnosis-as-psychoanalysis reading.

I have this thing going on in me, what seems to be happening is, my minds fills up with the voices of decievers, generally things that are self destructive and harmful to my person and body.

Yesterday it started to get so bad i began to pray, and these things were cast from me by my prayers, i basically requested gods protection, and it was given. I went from being hyper angry and stressed to being peaceful calm and tranquil within a period of minutes.

Uspine - This is pretty much spot-on what I use prayer for most days. When the dial in my brain is stuck on radio KFUCK. I'm not sure what other people's inner experience is like, but phrases like "the obscenity track" and "listening to the committee in your head" strike very close to how I experience the days when I'm not feeling too spiritual. And prayer, before anything else, lets me quiet the voices and feel like I'm returning, just for a little while, to a temporary alignment with the 'current' of god's will.
 
 
Claris Dancers
14:52 / 01.03.06
Sorry it took so long to respond, I've been pissing people off in another thread...

But that's fascinating. Thank you for sharing that. Your viewpoint seems a bit like pantheism with 'flesh of creation' and 'god is included in all aspects of the self and is also the environment.' I'm glad that works well for you. It also reminds me of what Money $hot and others were talking about earlier in the thread. Maybe it's just how im reading the thread (or maybe my own bias), but it general seems like people here in the temple see god and religion vastly differently than people i speak to in the real world. I like here better.
 
  

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