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#Post#: 7523--------------------------------------------------
Atonement
DIR By: j(
Date: December 2, 2024, 9:46 am
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Faith is what's left once everything else falls away. And I must
atone, (at one ment) for my sins of ignorance and pride.
I know that I know and can lay claim to nothing whatsoever. All
blessings bestowed upon me are due only to the glory of God.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I
will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff
they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the
presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my
cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all
the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
for ever amen.
#Post#: 7524--------------------------------------------------
Re: Atonement
DIR By: j(
Date: December 4, 2024, 10:00 am
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I have not become religious btw as I find religion to be more
devisive than unifying in most cases. I have not yet found God
as it were but do seek God in all that I do to my best ability.
Pray for strength, courage and humility regularly as I make a
habit of relinquishing my will unto the most high. If not to God
then to what do you relinquish will to? What do you have faith
in? Everyone believes in or has faith in something. Even if that
something is nothing in the form of randomness or chaos.
#Post#: 7525--------------------------------------------------
Re: Atonement
DIR By: Plato
Date: December 6, 2024, 4:54 pm
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--- Quote from: j( link ---
>
> I have not become religious btw as I find religion to be more
devisive than unifying in most cases. I have not yet found God
as it were but do seek God in all that I do to my best ability.
Pray for strength, courage and humility regularly as I make a
habit of relinquishing my will unto the most high. If not to God
then to what do you relinquish will to? What do you have faith
in? Everyone believes in or has faith in something. Even if that
something is nothing in the form of randomness or chaos.
>
--- End Quote ---
I tried to relinquish faith about 25 years ago when I finally
quit religion (cult), didn't realize that I was throwing the
baby out with the bath water! I lasted for almost 2 years
without faith, I say "Lasted" because my desire for existence
over that time just ground to a halt. I decided I couldn't go on
without it, I had to have faith in something but what?
Ended up choosing to have faith in the concept of faith itself,
that was the mustard seed I needed to keep going and faith kept
growing as well. Now faith has given way to "knowing" and the
knowing is simple; there is a supreme being/force, I've
experienced it, it's modus operandi is love (in the agape' sense
of the word) and that knowledge is all that matters, everything
in this life flows from this "Understanding" and all else might
as well be a simulation/amusement park right? I have to say it
often feels like I'm just an observer of it all, engaging only
as much as is necessary and only in the context of what feels
right, in the moment it is happening.
#Post#: 7526--------------------------------------------------
Re: Atonement
DIR By: j(
Date: December 7, 2024, 9:27 am
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--- Quote from: Plato link ---
>
> [quote author=j( link=topic=239.msg7524#msg7524
date=1733328019]
> I have not become religious btw as I find religion to be more
devisive than unifying in most cases. I have not yet found God
as it were but do seek God in all that I do to my best ability.
Pray for strength, courage and humility regularly as I make a
habit of relinquishing my will unto the most high. If not to God
then to what do you relinquish will to? What do you have faith
in? Everyone believes in or has faith in something. Even if that
something is nothing in the form of randomness or chaos.
>
--- End Quote ---
I tried to relinquish faith about 25 years ago when I finally
quit religion (cult), didn't realize that I was throwing the
baby out with the bath water! I lasted for almost 2 years
without faith, I say "Lasted" because my desire for existence
over that time just ground to a halt. I decided I couldn't go on
without it, I had to have faith in something but what?
Ended up choosing to have faith in the concept of faith itself,
that was the mustard seed I needed to keep going and faith kept
growing as well. Now faith has given way to "knowing" and the
knowing is simple; there is a supreme being/force, I've
experienced it, it's modus operandi is love (in the agape' sense
of the word) and that knowledge is all that matters, everything
in this life flows from this "Understanding" and all else might
as well be a simulation/amusement park right? I have to say it
often feels like I'm just an observer of it all, engaging only
as much as is necessary and only in the context of what feels
right, in the moment it is happening.
[/quote]
Can't say what God is or isn't per se but feel it as a creative
force upward towards the good and true. I have faith in that due
to things often working out for the best without either my
foreknowledge or active participation in many of my life
circumstances. I do feel that God works with you in the creative
process of building and maintaining life so long as your aim is
true but safe to say that faith can also grow from the
experience of continued relinquishing of ones own will. That is
the realization that not only do I not have to control every
given aspect of my existence but often times when seeing clearly
that interfering with selfish pride or the way I think things
should be often just leads right back to a due lesson of
ultimately trusting and having faith in a power greater than
oneself. Falling in line with unity rather than taking a foolish
and selfish stand against God as it were.
“And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that
shall humble himself shall be exalted” (Matthew 23:12).
#Post#: 7527--------------------------------------------------
Re: Atonement
DIR By: Plato
Date: December 11, 2024, 1:57 pm
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It feels good to not have an opinion or better, to have an
opinion but not believe that opinion to necessarily be "right"
or "true". Secondarily but connected is the tremendous relief
(after a lifetime of battling) it is, NOT feeling compelled to
defend one's opinion, whatsoever.
The only way to that place is the diminishment of ego, sounds
like you are right in the pocket J(
Good on you brother! ;)
#Post#: 7529--------------------------------------------------
Re: Atonement
DIR By: j(
Date: December 12, 2024, 10:54 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: Plato link ---
>
> It feels good to not have an opinion or better, to have an
opinion but not believe that opinion to necessarily be "right"
or "true". Secondarily but connected is the tremendous relief
(after a lifetime of battling) it is, NOT feeling compelled to
defend one's opinion, whatsoever.
>
> The only way to that place is the diminishment of ego, sounds
like you are right in the pocket J(
>
> Good on you brother! ;)
>
--- End Quote ---
No need to hold fast to having "no opinions" when it's a
byproduct (of realizing their relative yet unobjective truth.)
Sometimes a thought may meander through that just might spark a
conversation of significace...or not. Whatever. Good back on ya
;)
#Post#: 7530--------------------------------------------------
Re: Atonement
DIR By: biisuto
Date: January 1, 2025, 7:33 pm
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I like the idea of atonement spruiked in ACIM... which I would
embellish a little by adding that The Atonement is the state of
recognising one's incapacity for sin, as a forever unsullied
(and unsully-able), singular outcropping of The Creator, living
this meat-puppet dream, projected as a screen of matter within a
universe of living energy.
Happy New Year, Team Enlightenment. :-*
I didn't come here for this but feel moved to participate while
I am...
As always, I miss you guys and the shorthand conversations we
get to have here because... y'know... we get to keep this
toehold here in the void conscious by doing so.
My idea of God is kind of like the optic nerve at the epicentre
of the retina... our brain cannot register this massive blind
spot at the very centre of our seeing tool that actually makes
vision possible, and so it kindly paints over it, so as not to
ruin the view... yet it is the conduit to the visual cortex and
the brain itself, that does the painting and effectively erases
itself from our view of the world.
(Cool simile, I blow my self away sometimes...hmmm, does this
all read like an accident of evolution, or more like Gibran's,
"sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself"...?)
Because we are the product of that. And the most sensitive minds
to this sensory absence of source/cause are, for their short
spans here, haunted by a longing for it and the incompletion
implied... the 'dark matter' of God that is inferred only by
what my existential roots in Source itself keeps nudging this
dream-me, about what is absent from the picture I am seeing.
It's like somehow knowing you are watching TV but unable to see
the edges of the screen or anything beyond it.
Neo, unable to feel the jack in the back of his skull.
It can be maddening - and is, to almost all, hence the world we
witness.
Because the medium is the message.
This is it.
Yet there is a remedy for the madness... even if not to the
situation we have awakened into: unconditionality.
Why? Because conditions are the product of busy minds looking
for shortcuts, forever augmenting 'King of The Castle',
winners-and-losers lists of survival heuristics.
Blindly seeking to survive an unsurvivable game; to win the
unwinnable.
What is 'enlightenment' but the immature yearning for the
greatest shortcut of all: sitting cross-legged atop a lotus leaf
awaiting the final-boss wisdom of the deathbed without any of
the privations, suffering or wear-and-tear of what it takes to
get old and decrepit... or the ironic inconvenience of being too
old to do anything with it...? The older I get the clearer it is
that it's the journey and not the destination...and the search
for enlightenment is all about destination.
The medium is the message.
What a gip.
Unconditional acceptance - because filtering reality by breaking
it into 'bits', then resisting, rationalising and bleeping over
some bits while amplifying and inventing others is like the
definition of 'story' and precisely how we protect and reinforce
the game-playing ego.
Acceptance and then just being with that.
Unconditional forgiveness - for the blind/storied ignorance of
"they know not what they do" (including the 'me', who persists
in its bootstrapping belief in a 'me')
Unconditional love - which is the bridge back from this schizoid
existence in a fragmented, fragmenting dreamverse of meat and
pain, to the singularity of Creation.
Love is what the body's eyes misperceive as the spaces and
objects between us.
And, like the optic nerve thing, because we also misperceive
ourselves as meat, that very meat is how the ego paints over the
truth of what we are, minus the meat: Love.
Because Love is all there is.
Brahmin and Atman, animated by the ever-sexy hand of Maya.
#Post#: 7531--------------------------------------------------
Re: Atonement
DIR By: j(
Date: January 6, 2025, 9:43 am
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Agree and yet have faith - because all that is just the seeming
attempt to grok the ineffable for oneself right? To play God or
to make sense of existence at the level of human which of course
always falls short. Faith because whatever my creator and by
proxy myself is in essence perfect although my eyes can't see it
and my lips surely cannot speak it. None the less offering a
daily sacrifice that would be pleasing to God by still thrusting
oneself fully into the abyss. Realizing that it was all perfect
anyways and could be no other way.
#Post#: 7532--------------------------------------------------
Re: Atonement
DIR By: j(
Date: January 7, 2025, 9:28 am
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Jordan Peterson, a guy who has come up in discussion here has a
new book out, "We who wrestle with God." I've never been a a big
fan, see him with the gift of intelligence and the two sides of
that sword where he over intellectualizes to a fault but did
feel called to start reading this one. Life's fairly busy and
I've only made it through a few chapters but he does discuss
something interesting that we've brought up here as man made in
God's image and his place to name all things in God creation but
the fall of man in his inability to stay away from the tree of
Knowledge of good and evil. Won't spoil it if ever you guys do
dabble in it but feeling compelled moving forward to give all
glory to God in being the best I can be each day. My wife calls
me a perfectionist which is a true compliment coming from her!
Yet giving it all back as a humble human who knows my place in
the universe. Knowing that I Truly know nothing yet pushing
forward every day as I said offering a sacrifice that would be
pleasing to the most high. After all, what else is there to even
do.
#Post#: 7533--------------------------------------------------
Re: Atonement
DIR By: biisuto
Date: January 15, 2025, 5:37 pm
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Hey J(, haven't really got anything to add to this, but in the
spirit of conversation:
JBP (Peterson) is an interesting guy alright... I read his 12
Rules book when it came out...kind of a "teen's book of
rubber-hits-road" and very apropos our times - I liked it. I
also listened to his epic Maps of Meaning lecture series on YT -
I really liked that one. I saw him when he came to town with his
roadshow a few years back.
I haven't read this one, but it may be somewhere down the road
for me. Would like to hear more of your thoughts on it.
My 2024 reads were a mix of fun or comfort reads and some new
stuff. The new stuff made it the year of Nassim Nicholas Taleb
for me, rounding things up with David Deutch's "Beginnings of
Infinity" which I am still lolling through and enjoying his
explanations of infinity and the scientific case for optimism.
Taleb is a fascinating writer, most famous for his book "Black
Swans" (which is the only book of his Incerto series I haven't
actually read yet, although I have it). I got onto his work
because I am enthusiastic about his concept of Antifragility
(the propensity to thrive amid chaos) as it might apply to
psychosocial wellbeing... a quantum leap beyond the mainstream
fragility - resilience - robustness spectrum... still chewing on
that in my work, but JBP's work is nonetheless foundational to
it. Would like to write more about that too.
The fun /comfort section was mostly to do with gentler things,
such as meditation: Pema Chodron, Peter Russell, Charles
Eisenstein, bell hooks and a Sci-Fi series I first watched on
Prime: The Expanse.
I'm also gearing up for a trip back to Japan in May, for the
first time in 19 years, with my wife and daughter. I promised
the latter I'd take her motorcycling in the Japan Alps through
Gifu and Nagano and she'll be on her way back from Canada then,
so we'll meet there and hit the road, while the missus visits
with old friends.
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