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newbie Registered: 04/20/03 Posts: 4,497 Last seen: 8 years, 5 months |
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The main difference I see while the Orthodox and Catholic Churchs teach that we are saved by grace through faith and good works the gnostics believe that we are saved by knowledge of God or spiritual realization.
What has always confused me is why these two positions are even considered at odds with each other. How does one gain saving knowledge or gnosis? It can only be through grace and we know grace is ever present as a free gift from God, although one cannot apprehend it without faith and faith without works is dead. Hence, the notion of gnoses is somewhat superfluous as it not something extra or different from the conventional understanding of how one obtains salvation.
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tryin to stay sober Registered: 09/26/08 Posts: 450 Loc: Texas Last seen: 9 years, 6 months |
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I'm on my phone and too lazy and high to google some of those big words at the end. But I always thought you just had to belive in jesus and belive he died for our sins or something. I never really bought that cause a good person can not belive and not go to heaven, and a bad person can belive and go? And you can't force yourself to belive something if you really don't belive it. You can change your actions and shit, but not 'how you think'. I think? I just try to be a good person. If gods cool he'll understand why I didn't belive. So I'm guessing your on the orthodox side?
-------------------- I fucking hate grammer nazis! Yes, I can't spell. Yes, I don't have perfect grammer. I post from my phone and dont give a shit about people whose lifes are so boring they get off on putting people down for not having perfect fucking grammer, even though they know excactly what there saying.. Fuck You. It's just a ride mang...
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Squatchin Registered: 04/01/13 Posts: 1,015 Last seen: 4 years, 2 months |
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Quote: Gnostic christianity isnt the same as the majority of christianity based on a church approved canon from 1500 or so years ago.
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Ascended Registered: 11/14/10 Posts: 5,401 Last seen: 27 days, 2 hours |
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Transubstantiation and what not removed the True sacrament IMO.
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tryin to stay sober Registered: 09/26/08 Posts: 450 Loc: Texas Last seen: 9 years, 6 months |
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Over my head. Bye!
-------------------- I fucking hate grammer nazis! Yes, I can't spell. Yes, I don't have perfect grammer. I post from my phone and dont give a shit about people whose lifes are so boring they get off on putting people down for not having perfect fucking grammer, even though they know excactly what there saying.. Fuck You. It's just a ride mang...
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Wanderer Registered: 12/16/06 Posts: 17,891 Last seen: 42 minutes, 8 seconds |
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Quote: I've never dove into any particular school of Christianity but when I was reading The Cloud of Unknowing the description of "works" is quite different from what I was familiar with. It isn't described as giving to charity, or spreading the word, or any of that. The work to be done is about forgetting everything. Putting it all into a cloud of forgetting. Why? Because it gets in the way. If your goal is to know God, all the other stuff is in the way. Get to know God by giving to the poor? How? It's a convoluted distraction. It seems the quibble is over what to emphasize. If one knows God then they know the wisest way to act. If one is seeking God, it makes sense to put down the actions and focus on finding God instead. Many seem to be seeking God's approval which IMO is evidence of not knowing God but rather knowing only their imagination and I too would advise re-arranging priorities in such cases "St. Luke tells us that when our Lord was in the house of Martha her sister, all the time that Martha was busying herself preparing his meal, Mary sat at his feet. And as she listened to him she regarded neither her sister's busy-ness nor his priceless and blessed physical perfection, nor the beauty of his human voice and words. But what she was looking at was the supreme wisdom of his Godhead shrouded by the words of his humanity. And on this she gazed with all the love of her heart." - The Cloud of Unknowing
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The Minstrel in the Gallery Registered: 03/15/05 Posts: 95,368 Loc: underbelly |
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Get to know God by giving to the poor? How? It's a convoluted distraction.
Damn bro, you just saved me a ton of money.
-------------------- "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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Wanderer Registered: 12/16/06 Posts: 17,891 Last seen: 42 minutes, 8 seconds |
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I read you might have upcoming expenses while building onto your deck. How could I not help?
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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The Minstrel in the Gallery Registered: 03/15/05 Posts: 95,368 Loc: underbelly |
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-------------------- "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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newbie Registered: 04/20/03 Posts: 4,497 Last seen: 8 years, 5 months |
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Quote: You're thinking of protestant christianity. Most protestant churches teach something like, you must just have faith in Jesus and then God will treat you as if you were a good person even while you remain a bad person and then out of gratefulness to Him for that unwarranted favor, you will hopefully start becoming a better person, but the favor is in no way dependent on how good a person you become. The Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches however, have never taught this. They along the with Holy Bible (though protestants would disagree me on that based on a few verses which when taken out of context appear to support their heretical notions) teach that we must observe the moral law in order to be acceptable to God. In other words, you need to at least try to become a good person. That's not to say that our salvation is dependent on what we do, or how many sins we commit. Rather, if we have the kind of faith and devotion to God that the Bible says we must have, then we will naturally leave behind our wicked ways and begin behaving in accordance with the moral law. This process is known as santification. If we find ourselves less than perfectly sanctified and behaving in ways contrary to the moral law, then instead of wondering what it means (as in asking "am I really saved?" like the protestants do) we simply confess our sins and ask God for forgiveness and grace to move forward and leave sinful behaviors behind. Every day is a beautiful and brand new opportunity to learn how to love God and neighbor more perfectly and our prayers, our study of his laws, our obedience to his commandments, our love for him, our attendence at Mass and reception of his holy sacraments all cause God to take pity on us poor wretched sinners and this causes him to send us grace to sanctify us, which then we must simply accept. Protestants teach that salvation is just something God does to certain people, completely independent of how worthy of it they are. This is a terrible lie because it makes it sound as though salvation is not something we have to work for. In fact, in their twisted minds they believe we cannot work for it because it is a free gift from God and you do not have to work for a gift. Clearly this is a lie because the Bible says "work out your salvation with fear and trembling". If their doctrine of salvation was correct, why would the Bible tell us to work out our salvation? and why should we be afraid given that protestants teach that if we believe in Jesus, we have eternal assurance of salvation no matter what? The protestant lies are very subtle and that is how they have convinced so many people. For example, it's true that salvation is a gift and not something we can earn or merit. But with great gifts often comes great responsibility and that is certainly the case with salvation. God does not give us salvation so that we can do evil and get away with it. He gives it to us on the condition that we are willing to accept his help and learn how to live in accordance with his moral law. That is why if you actually read the Bible (which the protestants claim is the sole authority on God's revelation, even though the Bible itself never says that) God is constantly entering into covenants with people. I don't get how protestants miss this. God doesn't just give people wonderful gifts and then say, ok go have fun with this. Disobey me if you like and dont worry about the consequences because my gifts are free. God NEVER behaves that way in the Bible. Rather he ALWAYS enters into covenants with people "I promise I will do this for you, provided you are willing to do something for me". He establishes the final covenant in the new testament, where he says through the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross, he will forgive our sins and in exchange we must be willing to give up everything to follow him. Oh and I am catholic, not Orthodox but the two churches are so similar that I would be alright with converting to Orthodox if I happened to live somewhere not near any catholic churches. I consider them basically the same religion only run by different organizations, the orthodox church is not under the pope.
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newbie Registered: 04/20/03 Posts: 4,497 Last seen: 8 years, 5 months |
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Quote: yes you clearly have the right idea but you do have to be careful. In the book of Tobit St. Raphael, the Archangel states: 8 'Prayer with fasting and alms with uprightness are better than riches with iniquity. Better to practise almsgiving than to hoard up gold. Almsgiving saves from death and purges every kind of sin. Those who give alms have their fill of days;10 those who commit sin and do evil bring harm on themselves. Youre understanding that whats most important is establishing a conciouss connection with God is what is most important, because then one is wise and knows what to do. However, the forces of evil which seek to deceive mankind will twist every spiritual gift and attempt to turn it into something negative. An example of how this could be turned into something negative is osmeone going into a cave to meditate on God and never helping anohter soul. Giving to the poor, provided it is done with righteousness and not in an attempt to buy our way into heaven or make us appear good or make us feel like we are better than people who dont give alms, does bring us a closer to God. Giving to those in need while expecting nothing in return not only pleases the Lord, it also trains one to stop lusting after the fruit of his or her actions which is the true goal. The difference between a saint and a sinner is that the sinner is almost always secretly asking in every situation "what can I get out of this? whats in it for me?" "when is my next break? what time is lunch? When can I smoke my next cigarrette?" whereas the saint is secretly asking "what do I have to give these people? how best can I glorify God in this situation and give him thanks? the saints focus in on God and neighbor, whereas the sinners focus is on himself or herself. Think of the worst sinners, they all have one thing in common. They treat themselves and what they want as being the most important thing, far more important than what is best for others. Now even if your desire is to know God, a good desire it is still your desire, whereas giving away your hard earned money to poor and in your mind most probably irresponsible people (or else why would they be so poor? and cant all those people in third world countries dying of starvation realize that there wouldn't be so many poor starving children if they would quit breeding so much? dont have seven children if you cant even afford to give your first child a bowl of rice every day) is probably one of the last things you would really like to do. Therefore, giving to the poor out of righteousness, out a true desire to help them rather than by yourself that new range rover and the flat screen tv your wife told you she wanted, is pleasing to the Lord our God. And God always rewards that which he finds pleasing.
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Elder Registered: 12/09/99 Posts: 14,279 Loc: South Florida Last seen: 3 years, 27 days |
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Quote: Gnosis in Greek is equivalent to Gyan (or Jnani) in Advaitist Non-Dualism. The Gnostics recognized 3 typologies among humans: Hylics (or Sarkics. Sarx means 'flesh'), Psychics, and Pneumatics. Hylics are just sensory-dominated materialistic people. End of story. They identify with what is strictly perishable, and perish. The Psychics live by faith, although there is upward mobility and a Psychic Christian can become a Pneumatic Christian by virtue of experiencing Gnosis. In Gnosis, like the Hindu Sat Chit Ananda, which is sometimes translated as Knowledge-Consciousness-Bliss, or Being-Consciousness-Bliss, is the condition in which Knower-Knowledge-Known have become ONE. It is the same ONE that everyone else on the planet speaks of: "Hear O Israel, the LORD thy God, the LORD is ONE." For Gnostics, the written word is a record of those writers who have experienced varying degrees of Gnosis. Paul revealed his "Christ mysticism," while Iesous revealed his "God mysticism." The difference is profound, as Albert Schweitzer took great pains to explain in his book The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle. Christianity in general has swallowed Paul's experience as THE Christian experience, but Paul's own visionary out-of-the-body experience in 2 Corinthians 12:2, "I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven. How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter..." was still 'in form' as the Buddhists say. Paul had a Light experience on the road to Damascus and was left blind for some days as well. Such experiences belong to a high Psychic realm (which I denote as Psychospiritual in my own system of classification), while the experience of Iesous belongs to what I call the Psychocosmic realm. Iesous experienced his identity as being the Ground of Being, Pure Identity, "I AM." Christianity then takes Iesous and creates a unique specie of being out of him which is to be worshipped, instead of endeavoring to experience what Iesous experienced. Faith is someone else's experience is what makes for a Psychic Christian in Gnostic terms. In fact, when a handful of Christian mystics did experience that, like Meister Eckhart. Eckhart (the name that Eckhart Tolle took as his own) said: “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love,” he was condemned as a heretic, and had he not died of natural causes would have been burned at the stake outside of Cologne Cathedral for uttering such presumption. Anyone but Iesous who has had this Realization is condemned for such blasphemous presumption in Christendom. In Islam, the mystic al Hallaj said, similarly to Iesous, "I am the Truth," and for that, his hands and feet were amputated and he was then crucified! Being too cosmic (or Psychocosmic) is too threatening for most people, especially those keepers of the tables in the temple who create the whole worldly game of power, and who maintain borders, and generally are opposed to higher unity but desire separation, self-interest, and cannot see past their animal or demonic proclivities. -------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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The Minstrel in the Gallery Registered: 03/15/05 Posts: 95,368 Loc: underbelly |
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Interesting, I admit here I don't know that much about the Gnostics but a huge difference for me is that they don't seem to organize around religious organizations that are, from what I've seen and heard, rotten at the core with corruption.
Probably had Christianity remained or been mostly Gnostic I would have never been seen to comment negatively on them and might have been attracted at some level. Never heard of the Gnostic Inquisition and other such barbarisms. -------------------- "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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Elder Registered: 12/09/99 Posts: 14,279 Loc: South Florida Last seen: 3 years, 27 days |
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Quote: There was a whole crusade aimed against the Gnostics called Cathars - the Cathar or Albigensian Crusade. These people lived beyond reproach in terms of self-discipline, morality, and contemplation, but they held views that were deemed heretical and were condemned by the Catholic Church. One Cathar city was burned to the ground, 15-20 thousand inhabitants slaughtered, including some Catholics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat -------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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The Minstrel in the Gallery Registered: 03/15/05 Posts: 95,368 Loc: underbelly |
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And why doesn't that surprise me one little bit?
The Catholic church has a very ugly history right up to the present imo and for the life of me I cannot see how anyone abides it and chooses to work within such an organization. It makes no logical sense that I can see. Not if one makes claims to or aspires to righteousness.
-------------------- "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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Elder Registered: 12/09/99 Posts: 14,279 Loc: South Florida Last seen: 3 years, 27 days |
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Quote: I blinked all the atrocities myself when I took catechism and baptism in the RCC when I was 23. I had positive influences from my best friend and his Italian family, the Irish Catholics across the street and their older pretty blonde daughter who used to baby sit me, and from my camping-tripping buddy Ed, who was my baptismal witness. I rejected the reformed Judaism of my father, refused Bar Mitzvah, and sought meaning in a Western religion that I saw, at the time, was available and open to mysticism. I extracted some MDA from nutmeg and took it for midnight mass on Christmas Eve one year, trying to bring up a more devotional feeling to my usual intellectual mode of being, but, meh. Some nun said, "I like your beard, but NOT the long hair," AS IF I was asking her opinion. Another time, a nun said "Don't look through me," which was astute because I was trying to see through psychedelically inspired depersonalization with everyone back then. I really didn't like my Jewish culture, or perhaps I would've looked more closely at Jewish mysticism. I think the mythic Jesus was a surrogate older brother that I sought, or a non-corporeal guru amidst all those charlatans that populated the 1970s whom I refused to bow or kneel before. I thought I was identifying with the asceticism (it was crazy trying to become a celibate in my 20s), and with mystics. I simply neglected to look at church history and its crusades, persecutions of Jews, Pagans, heretics, Wise Women (witches), Muslims, etc., and its 'Holy Inquisition,' with all of those sexual sadists that would make John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer look like choir boys. Fortunately, I realized that I didn't want to live with men, who, I was rapidly discovering, didn't much care for women anyway, so I dropped the idea of becoming a monk, and entered a Methodist seminary instead. There, I met even more visiting Catholic monks (Trappist and Benedictine), but I avoided them as much as those Protestant purveyors of very non-mystical social gospels. Like everywhere else I'd been so far, I was still on my own. I took my wife to midnight mass about 17 years ago, and she wept the entire time without knowing why. I never went back, and at this point, unless I have a funeral to attend (like my best friend's dad whom I knew since 1955), I'm not ever going into a Catholic church again. I don't believe that the eucharist has any transcendental magick to it. Perhaps I'll learn to press 3.5 gms of P. cubensis into a disk and chase it down with a cup of wine in a sacramental Gnostic ritual of my own making. For now, we imbibe in ritual cups with apple sauce. -------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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newbie Registered: 04/20/03 Posts: 4,497 Last seen: 8 years, 5 months |
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Quote: Where do you classify someone like me though? I have had the experience of being God, not just being in the presence of God but becoming so absorbed in God that I was truly God, I was the ground of being. However, that experience did not last. So now, I must live by faith. Quote: Why do you use the word instead as if the two are mutually exclusive? How is one to endeavor to experience what Jesus experienced? This may come as a shock as to you, but I have noticed that it tends to be quite unusual for non drug users and even the majority of drug users to experience themselves as being the ground of being. Its an extremely rare experience and its even rarer for someone to maintain it the way Jesus did. The Bhagavad Gita says that fewer than one in one million people pursue sadhanas (spiritual practice) to completion. Quote: You mean everyone, including Jesus. That is why Jesus was crucified, for claiming to be God. That state of consciousness is so radical and so diametrically opposed to the normal state of human consciousness that there is always going to be a clash of minds when someone has attained it. Quote: You're right, it is too threatening and having had that experience I fully understand why. It means the death of the ego and most people are identified enough with their egos that to them it means their own death. Furthermore, the naive ego is incapable of understanding such as an experience as you can see on this forum if you observe the debates between me and people like icelander. He has had many psychedelic experiences and yet hes made it very clear that when i speak of experiencing oneself as the ground of being, as truly one with God, he has no idea what I am talking about. In other words, I think that God-realization is out of reach of the average person, and so there is nothing wrong with living by faith. ANd furthermore I would like to know what the difference is in a practical sense. For example, i agree with you that the mysticism of Paul and the mysticism of Jesus are quite different. And yet both are above my own. Now, God-realization is my goal and yet what can I do differently from what I have already been doing to achieve this? That is why I asked you if there was some special prayer that gnostics say. Its great to have these lofty ideals about experiencing yourself as the ground of being, but do you actually experience yourself that way? Are you the Christ? If not, then I see nothing with aspiring to the mysticism of St. Paul. Perfect God realization may be outside the realms of the churches teaching but that is because its so incredibly difficult to attain it that for all practical purposes it seems as though we might as well just worship Jesus because trying to attain it for oneself, seems like an exercise in frustration. Except perhaps for those few who are truly ready and for them, it will happen regardless of whether it goes beyond the church's teaching because if there is one thing about God-realization, its impossible to deny after it has happened to you.
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Elder Registered: 12/09/99 Posts: 14,279 Loc: South Florida Last seen: 3 years, 27 days |
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This is why I so enjoy reading Eckart Tolle. He describes the condition SO well, I begin to experience Being with greater intensity as I read his words. The NT never altered my consciousness this way, probably because Jesus wasn't doing the writing, but Tolle is! Jesus has been so mythologized that he no longer has even the semblance of a historical person to me. Jesus remains the symbol of the Jungian Self in the West, as Buddha is in the East, but again, these names are more symbolic of conditions of human wholeness than anything else.
I do not go about in a condition of Full-Realzation, but I don't think anyone does or did. If Jesus existed historically, he went off on vision quests in the desert to fast and pray like most mystics. Nobody can live for long on the peaks of mountains like Everest where the atmosphere is pristine but rarified, exalted but sterile, crystalline but icy. The syllable OM in Buddhism stands for peak experiences at the Sahasrara, but then there must follow a Descent Towards realization after the Ascent towards Unification. The Heart is the place between the peak and the base camp that one must come to dwell (tabernacle) in. In Buddhism, it's syllable is HUM, as in HUMan. This is Christ, Compassion of the Heart, intermediary between Heaven and Earth, between the angelic and the animal domains. There are no Gnostic prayers that you seek because what you are asking for is a magickal answer. Transcendental magick to be sure, but a formula to sway The Way. The Way is not to be swayed. Our task is to accept The Way, while at the same time Individuating (in Jungian terms) which is to say, establishing an "ego-Self axis" which is what Jesus (ego) and the Father (Self) symbolizes in the Bible. As we develop this axis, our will and the Will of God, The Way (things are supposed to be) align, and work as One. This sounds better when one understands that The Way (earliest reference to Christ and Christians) is what the word Tao means in Chinese thought. Taoism does not anthropomorphize as Christianity does with a 'Father' God. It all goes better with an outside understanding of the same Truth. As BE HERE NOW says, "...The Way is The Way is The Way..." Jung's Sinologist, Richard Wilhelm, who translated the I Ching made this story available to Jung, and thence to us. It illustrates faith, but further, it illustrate gnosis in practical terms: http://www.ralphmag.org/BN/why.h -------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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newbie Registered: 04/20/03 Posts: 4,497 Last seen: 8 years, 5 months |
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Yes I knew there was not going to be any prayer before I asked, that was my point.
I used to be in search of a formula to sway the way as you put it. I was always looking for some special trick or technique or that would bring about enlightenment. In fact, that was what my approach to prayer used to be like. I remember a friend of mine was teaching me how to pray the rosary and i said some part of it wrong and I asked her if that meant it was invalid and I had to start over. She explained that no, God hears your prayer even if dont say it exactly right and you dont have to start over from the beginning. That seems so obvious to me now and yet back then I used to treat prayers more like they were magic words. But that is how I came to feel comfortable in the Catholic Church. The biggest hurdle I had to overcome, was my obsession with forcing enlightenment. You see, I felt like since I had already experienced myself as the ground of being, why should I have to go to church every week? why should I have to learn about the Bible? why should I have to do anything? I already knew the ultimate truth. It was very difficult for me to accept that just because I had had that experience, it didn't make me a saint in ordinary life after I came down from it and i was going to have to work on it just like everyone else. Secondly, I had to get over my spiritual pride that made me feel like I was better than normal catholics because I knew that in truth I was one with the ground of being, whereas most catholics are probably unaware of this. "I don't believe that the eucharist has any transcendental magick to it. P" I don't know what you mean by transcendental magick, but as far as I am concerned there is something about this ritual that is immensely powerful. I cant explain how it works but the Eucharist alters my consciousness beyond any shadow of a doubt and it does so in a way that is much purer than LSD/mushrooms. I don't know how it does this, but it instantly activates my heart center and my mind tends to drop into my heart. Now I can activate my heart center with LSD and mushrooms also but it doesn't happen automatically, i have to work on it. With the Eucharist the activation is instant and automatic. Its quite amazing really.
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newbie Registered: 04/20/03 Posts: 4,497 Last seen: 8 years, 5 months |
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In the end it all comes down to being the same path. Whether cloaked under Catholic, Gnostic, Orthodox, Buddhist, Hindu, etc it's all the same road.
The only thing that makes folks like Meister Eckhart stand out, is the fact that they went a tad further down the path as compared to your run of the mill theologian. But for most people, changing over from Catholic to gnostic is not going to catapult their spiritual growth. Your spiritual growth is much more dependent on YOU and your reactions than which religion you belong to. Human beings are so programmed to look at differences in order to maintain the illusion of duality. Therefore we see a difference between gostic christianity and catholic. The difference is actually quite small compared to say the difference between catholic christianity and scientific materialism which says we are just an animal with no spiritual potential, no way to trascend the limits of material reality. Those practicing most forms of CHristianity with a sincere heart and genuine desire to serve God are on the path that leads to realization whether they themselves know or not. But God will reveal himself to them, when He sees fit. It seems to me that Catholics regard the absolute ground of being as a Person, not a human person but they consider God to be a person none the less. Similarly, they regard God's son, ego, as a Person also and they say that Person is Jesus Christ. And that is correct in the sense that that Person is who Jesus was. The peculiarity among non gnostic Christians seems to be the exclusive worship of Jesus, that is the non recognition of other God-realized beings. Although in the Catholic and Orthodox church we practice devotion to Mary and the saints. My theory on this is that God wanted to be represented by one man one earth for a while, because it would confuse people if they tried to conceive of a whole group of God-realized beings and they would not be able to see how God was one. Thus, Jesus is the image of God. No one is to be put above him or even made to be equal to Him because no one is above or equal to God. Jesus is the one God chose to be his special representative on earth.
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The Catholic church has a very ugly history right up to the present imo and for the life of me I cannot see how anyone abides it and chooses to work within such an organization.
It makes no logical sense that I can see. Not if one makes claims to or aspires to righteousness.
