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fazdazzle
Wanderer


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Re: Faith and Belief [Re: Poid]
#12764164 - 06/18/10 02:58 PM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
Poid said:
Quote:
Cyph3r said: I don't think it's possible to hold no beliefs whatsoever.
While I agree that it may be difficult, perhaps even impossible, to eliminate all emotional/psychological attachment to one's ideas/beliefs/world view, I think that it's entirely possible for one to logically recognize that since one cannot really be 100% certain about anything, this means that there is no good reason to have any concrete beliefs.
What??
I can be 100% sure that I will die if I stay inside of a burning building and my emotion backed belief about the danger of fire keeps me alive, which is a pretty good reason.
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fazdazzle
Wanderer


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Re: Faith and Belief [Re: deCypher]
#12764171 - 06/18/10 03:00 PM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
Cyph3r said: I have faith that someday all of us will define our words in the same way. 
well if linguists would work on language like particle physicists are working on the universe, maybe we could speak using fundamental words that don't refer to other things......
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Poid
Shroomery's #1 Spellir




Registered: 02/04/08
Posts: 40,372
Loc: SF Bay Area
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Re: Faith and Belief [Re: fazdazzle]
#12764178 - 06/18/10 03:01 PM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
fazdazzle said: I can be 100% sure that I will die if I stay inside of a burning building...
No you can't, unless of course your municipality cannot afford to fund a fire department.
-------------------- Well I try my best to be just like I am, but everybody wants you to be just like them. -- Bob Dylan  fireworks_god said:It's one thing to simply enjoy a style of life that one enjoys, but it's another thing altogether to refer to another person's choice as "wrong" or to rationalize their behavior as being pathological or resulting from some sort of inadequacy or failing so as to create a sense of superiority or separation as yet another projection of a personal fear or control issue.
Edited by Poid (06/18/10 06:04 PM)
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g00ru
lit pants tit licker



Registered: 08/09/07
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Quote:
c0sm0nautt said: Don't let the mind's connotations dirty up the idea. I'm not talking about the faith the Christian has that he will, upon death, be accepted into heaven - this is a belief. To me, faith is a knowing, a feeling, which is only accessible in the present moment. It acts as the pull of the bow which releases the arrow of Enlightenment.
Haha excellently put My mind definitely does attach a connotation to faith.
-------------------- check out my music! drowse in prison and your waking will be but loss
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deff
just love everyone


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Re: Faith and Belief [Re: g00ru]
#12765074 - 06/18/10 05:49 PM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
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i agree with the OP - faith is amazingly beneficial, and is really just the lack of doubt, which becomes a limiting mental construct
faith is not based in ideas (like beliefs) as ideas constrict the vastness of the mind down to apparent forms - faith instead is a process of opening i find - which allows spiritual practice to be effective
openness is really good 
the idea of this kind of open faith is found in vajrayana buddhism with the practice of guru yoga - where one's faith in their spiritual teacher allows their mind to become open to their blessings
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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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Re: Faith and Belief [Re: deff]
#12765108 - 06/18/10 05:57 PM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
deff said: i agree with the OP - faith is amazingly beneficial, and is really just the lack of doubt, which becomes a limiting mental construct
How do you figure? If anything, the lack of doubt itself is a limiting mental construct because you are ignoring the possibility that you might be wrong.
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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deff
just love everyone


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Re: Faith and Belief [Re: deCypher]
#12765143 - 06/18/10 06:03 PM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
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within the realm of ideas, doubt can be good for that
faith is more the process of opening up to transcend that realm altogether
it isn't faith in a thing, but rather just open faith - the falling away of preconceived notions i suppose
any way you try to define it already limits it, as it's above the realm of ideation i think
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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
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Re: Faith and Belief [Re: deff]
#12765158 - 06/18/10 06:08 PM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
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yeah I think we're using different definitions then. I thought that one must always have faith IN something; it doesn't really make sense to me to say that I just have faith without further qualification.
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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g00ru
lit pants tit licker



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Re: Faith and Belief [Re: deCypher]
#12765266 - 06/18/10 06:31 PM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
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There's an open attitude that is described well by the word "faith." If you're open to anything the universe can give you, some degree of faith in the universe is required, that you won't get totally burned (or maybe that you will )
It is impossible to really put into words though because it resides in the moment, not as an idea.
-------------------- check out my music! drowse in prison and your waking will be but loss
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c0sm0nautt

Registered: 05/19/08
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Loc: The Astral Realm
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Re: Faith and Belief [Re: g00ru]
#12765794 - 06/18/10 08:19 PM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
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Yes, deff and guruuu, that is the idea I was trying to express. Ram Dass says, "The whole game is based on faith." It is not faith in the traditional sense which man scientific "rational" people see as a weakness, but rather a state of being which transcends the dualistic notions and allows for experience of the transcendental. "Opening" yourself up to experience is a great way to describe it.
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery



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"The whole game is based on faith."
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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Quote:
c0sm0nautt said: "Opening" yourself up to experience is a great way to describe it.
I'm cool with that, provided we leave enough skepticism to make sure we don't adhere to any dogmatic interpretation of the experience after we have it.
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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c0sm0nautt

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Re: Faith and Belief [Re: deCypher]
#12765920 - 06/18/10 08:46 PM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
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Deal. I think words just take away from such experiences anyway, but unfortunately they are the only way we can talk on the interwebz, keke
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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
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kekekekeke ZERG RUSH OF EGO LOSS
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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Re: Faith and Belief [Re: deCypher]
#12768454 - 06/19/10 10:36 AM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
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Just stumbled across this passage in a book on Buddhism that I'm reading and thought it was relevant:
Quote:
"When there is great doubt," says a Zen aphorism that Kusan Sunim kept repeating, "then there is great awakening." This is the key. The depth of any understanding is intimately correlated with the depth of one's confusion. Great awakening resonates at the same "pitch" as great doubt. So rather than negate such doubt by replacing it with belief, which is the standard religious procedure, Zen encourages you to cultivate that doubt until it "coagulates" into a vivid mass of perplexity. ... Great Doubt is not a purely mental or spiritual state: it reverberates throughout your body and your world. It throws everything into question. In developing such doubt, you are told to question "with the marrow of your bones and the pores of your skin." You are exhorted to "be totally without knowledge and understanding, like a three year old child."
-Stephen Batchelor
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery



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Re: Faith and Belief [Re: deCypher] 1
#12768477 - 06/19/10 10:43 AM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
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imo that is a very profound quote. Thanks
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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auxiliary
Mr.



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Re: Faith and Belief [Re: deCypher]
#12768512 - 06/19/10 10:52 AM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
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Knowledge and understanding is attachment to the minds manifestations.
I sorta skimmed through all the semantics- Cosmo, seems your definition of faith is the universal, unconditional "everythings-okay," and in this sense it is monumental for non-attachment.
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MarkostheGnostic
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Two years in a Methodist seminary, and the only Methodist theological point that stuck with me after 32 years is the doctrine of Assurance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_(theology)
Piggybacking on the 11:11 thread, Paul's description of faith was: "...the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." - Hebrews 11:1, KJV.
Compare with Wiki's definition of Gnosis:
Gnosis (from one of the Greek words for knowledge, γνῶσις) is the spiritual knowledge of a saint[1] or mystically enlightened human being. Within the cultures of the term's provenance (Byzantine and Hellenic) Gnosis was a special knowledge or insight into the infinite, divine and uncreated in all and above all,[2] rather than knowledge strictly into the finite, natural or material world which is called epistemological knowledge.[3] Gnosis is a transcendental as well as mature understanding.[4] It indicates direct spiritual experiential knowledge[5] and intuitive knowledge, mystic rather than that from rational or reasoned thinking. Gnosis itself is obtained through understanding at which one can arrive via inner experience or contemplation such as an internal epiphany of intuition and external epiphany such as the Theophany. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosis
The distinction of internal and external is problematical in that it may be relative to our 'skin' as the boundary between internal and external. Mind and sprit however, are not bound by our 'skin' since both categories transcend both extension in space, as well as time. One cannot have a skull full of mind, and Psi functions demonstrate non-linearity of time. Theophanies however, are said to manifest 'in' space-time. If the 'pillar of fire' in the book of Exodus was analyzed as a perceptual phenomenon, would it have been manifested of matter-energy from the fabric of space-time out of which everything is made, or would it have been an interface from a higher dimension, co-existing with our 4 dimensions? Would it be similar or identical with typical combustion, or like the 'fire' of the 'burning bush' which was later explained as being a Seraph - a celestial 'being' ontologically closest to Deity? Would the 'burning bush' have been able to be perceived by the eyes, or by the mind alone? Could it have 'burned' Moses' fingers? Of course, this assumes that scriptural writings describe perceptual events in real time, not visionary states, midrash, myth, or metaphor. Then, Theophanies (manifestations of God) would be purely metaphysical. But I digress...widely and wildly. Sorry about that.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
Edited by MarkostheGnostic (06/19/10 11:08 AM)
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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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Re: Faith and Belief [Re: auxiliary]
#12768521 - 06/19/10 10:54 AM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
auxiliary said: I sorta skimmed through all the semantics- Cosmo, seems your definition of faith is the universal, unconditional "everythings-okay," and in this sense it is monumental for non-attachment. 
Couldn't that also be described in terms of having a well-grounded root chakra?
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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auxiliary
Mr.



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Re: Faith and Belief [Re: deCypher]
#12768610 - 06/19/10 11:16 AM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
Cyph3r said:
Quote:
auxiliary said: I sorta skimmed through all the semantics- Cosmo, seems your definition of faith is the universal, unconditional "everythings-okay," and in this sense it is monumental for non-attachment. 
Couldn't that also be described in terms of having a well-grounded root chakra?
I don't know  I dabble in spirituality. Specific terminology I think places faith on the outside.
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