Three little secrets about God

[anagami]

1) If you are not the Creator you are the Creation.

How many religions there are? Hundreds!

How many gods there are? One: The Creator.

2) You cannot choose your God.

If you go to an ice-cream parlor that serves only one flavor ice-cream “vanilla” you can only have vanilla.

Since there is only one God “The Creator” you don’t have a choice.

3) How you worship God is irrelevant.

When you will meet your God what you think about him is irrelevant.

The only thing that matter is what HE thinks about you.


Namaste

[gruntal]

It is interesting to speculate if even God can realize Himself. Certainly all of creation that is alive is also self aware but with the limitations of having to "look in a mirror" to see self. Assuming God would be the same it follows He would need something to look back at Him to validate His existence. That is where we come in.

But it also follows we, as human beings, can only internalize what we see based on our experiences and awareness. So the number of Gods would be roughly that same as the number of beings that see or seek God. Throw in an inherited case of the "nasties" and God might come off only a bit better this His worshipers.

That is what happens when beings fragment ....

Another secret is God is everlasting but doesn't seem to be static. " I am what I will become". The last time I checked all of creation was evolving and improving to higher levels.

Or is God so separate He is immune to all of this ? Are we catching up with God or are we both evolving together?

[anagami]

Separation is an illusion of the Ego. There is no separation.

All consciousness rise from the One like waves from the ocean.

Distinct but not disconnected. With specific qualities but with the same nature.

We are God but we can’t remember it until we return to the One.

[gruntal]

There is a scenario, often played out in the science fiction works, of the long journey to the stars. And how the travelers forget they were ever on a mission and think of themselves as just explorers. The purpose of life does tend to degenerate to survival even as the very concept of a life's purpose becomes presumptuous. But then how do we know where we were before if so much is forgotten? Or how many times we went back and forth?

I would like to think at the end of the road is something we left behind eons ago. We never dreamed it would be so. To say the least that conclusion is nothing we were prepared for. But then it also follows we might conceivably have already arrived. But we just don't know it as of yet.

It is all in the mind set ....

[aceofcups]

To me I like to see humans as evolving sparks from the Immortal Flame of Universal Consciousness.  Both contain the same essence of light or flame-ness.. but to realize that and experience or "Wake Up" to it's fullness takes trips on the road of evolution ( a process of both growing and shedding on multiple levels of our Being). 

Both the Absolute awakening of BE-NESS and the relative journeys are both part of the paradoxical nature of our existence.

To deny either in my opinion is a kind of folly.

[anagami]

The One is non-duality. The One is unbound, therefore amoral. (not to be confused with immoral)

When we are born (which is a transformation, not a separation) we have the quality of the source.

Newborn are unbound.

We experience lies, deceit, and betrayal in order to learn what truth, sincerity, and loyalty are.

We are exposed to sickness, violence, war, prejudice, racism, injustice, pain and suffering, not as some form of punishment for some imaginary sin but in order to see and learn the difference between good and evil. Our purpose is to elevate above good and evil, to evolve into a superior consciousness.

Siddhartha the buddha and latter Jesus the christ have become self-realized beings and taught us the path of enlightenment. Unfortunately, the Gnostic teachings of Jesus have been suppressed by the church and replaced with the dogma “you pay us will give you a heavenly pass” The Buddhist teachings have fared a little bit better. We still have the Buddhist Sutras and the 8 fold path but even those have been contaminated by endless interpretations and turned into religious dogma.

[gruntal]

There is a supposedly "gotcha" that if there was a God He wouldn't permit disease and earthquakes. In fact God is indeed amoral and bestows His blessing on the " just and unjust alike". It is up the mere mortals to invent morals and a sense of right and wrong. At our level we can't conceive of anything beyond that but I suspect there is.

That also reminds me of the old bugaboo of trying to rely on good feelings versus things like drug addiction. Drugs make you feel good or people would not use then. But then a large number of addicts voluntarily turn them selves in for rehabilitation. Why? Apparently there are different levels of feelings. So we do indeed make choices beyond what evolution calls selfish survival.

[anagami]

Ephemeral and illusory is the material world.

All humans die. Animals die, plants die, the planets and the stars in the sky; we all die.

Rich men die, poor men die. How rich is a dead man?

Sick men die, healthy men die too. How healthy is a dead man?

Powerful men die, weak men die. How powerful is a dead man?



We seek money, power and fame. Fascinated by the glitter of the material world we rush to our demise like moths into the fire.

Escape the grip of desire, shed your Ego, free yourself from the prison of reason and you will see the truth.

[gruntal]

It is interesting that at some instance chaos rules and the Cosmos seems to want to disperse like escaping gas. But another instance things like magnetism and gravity are just physical examples of a greater force that seeks to gather and bind us as a whole.

Do attraction and repulsion act as counterparts or is there just one force - and a decision rather to align with it immediately or at some point in the future ?

[aceofcups]

Light-hearted pondering's on Truth

Truth always has U in it's center. - Aceofcups
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Relative Truth / Absolute Truth
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There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths. – Friedrich Nietzsche
– Anything that we take to be true is revisable
– We can never have a ‘god’s-eye’ view of the universe
– All truths are a matter of opinion
– Truth is relative (to culture, historical epoch, language, society etc.)
– All the truths that we know are subjective truths (i.e. mind-dependent truths)
– There is nothing more to truth than what we are willing to assert as true
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Buddhism on Four Noble Truths

It was these four principles that the Buddha came to understand during his meditation under the bodhi tree.

-The truth of suffering (Dukkha)

-The truth of the origin of suffering (Samudāya)

-The truth of the cessation of suffering (Nirodha)

-The truth of the path to the cessation of suffering (Magga)

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Truth, like knowledge, is surprisingly difficult to define.  We seem to rely on it almost every moment of every day and it's very "close" to us.  Yet it's difficult to define because as soon as you think you have it pinned down, some case or counterexample immediately shows deficiencies.  Ironically, every definition of truth that philosophers have developed falls prey to the question, "Is it true?"
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[anagami]

Truth is a word, like apple. 
Apple is not an apple is a word. 

How do you define an apple?
"the round fruit of a tree of the rose family, which typically has thin red or green skin and crisp flesh"
But that isn't an apple either, that is just the definition of an apple"
Only an apple is an apple.

If I say "I've eaten an apple this morning" you know what an apple is because you have eaten apples too.
Try to define "apple" to a being from another planet with no fruits and trees.
If you don't know what truth is you'll never know what truth is because just like an apple only truth is truth.

[gruntal]

An apple, at least in the Genesis story, was a symbol for ovaries. The snake was a symbol for you-know-what. Later there was a story of two brothers who offered sacrifices to God but the one that gave garden veggies got spurned. Assuming peaches and sweet peas remind you more of girls in pigtails it is easy to chock up this Bible story as typical male misogynism. God is a He-Man and wants meat on his altar!

That things would have hidden meanings can be vexing and confusing. And may even lead to denial that the object still exists. But as you say a being from elsewhere might have a have time visualizing an apple but we tend to think all beings in any reality grapple with abstract concepts sooner or later. It is that and not what we eat for lunch that unites us ...

[anagami]

Scientifically speaking you don't exist, and neither anybody else for that matter.
When you look in the mirror you see a highly structured bag of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and a whole bunch of other different atoms. Technically you are nothing but talking solar dust.
So who is "I"?
Has anybody seen a picture of their mind?
What proof do you have that what you call "I" exists?
Is God a dream of your mind or is your mind a dream of God?

[anagami]

@ mojomojo
I see myself as a two-part entity.
One the material self, the product of social programming. The "I think therefore I am" a.k.a the Ego.
The immaterial, spiritual, immortal soul, The "I am therefore I think" a.k.a the "I"
Without that distinction all my arguments are nonsense.
Without that duality the search for one true self or true nature is futile. You are that you are and there is nothing else to it.

But the question remains "What was you before you were mojomojo?"
Because nothing comes out of nothing and nothing turns into nothing.
Birth and death are transformations not sudden appearances from nothing.
What were you before you became a human being?

P.S. Thank you for having this debate.
A mind is like a muscle; the more you use it the stronger and healthier it gets and I need all the exercising I can get 

[anagami]

The idea of creation is based on the premises that the material world exists.
It is a common illusion like the illusion of solidity. There are no solid objects.
They appear solid but under a microscope, you can see the empty space.
The material world is both existence and nonexistence blended together.

We have a bias in perceiving the "existence"  part of it.
We hear the sound but not the silence, we see the light but not the darkness.
But silence and darkness are nonexistence yet we don't count them as such.
We only see the YANG and not the YIN, We see the mountains but not the valleys.

For every + there is a - They could not exist without the other;
Pleasure cannot exist without pain, hot without cold, high without low, good without evil God without Satan.
The ONE that defines everything but cannot be defined is nonduality,
It is above and beyond existence and nonexistence.

Enlightenment is a state of nonduality when a consciousness rises above good and evil above the duality.
An enlightened person sees pain and pleasure suffering and joy as the two sides of a coin. As defining each other.
A buddha or a christ are consciousness returned to the source.
They are above gods and demons they are the ultimate purpose of the universe

It is my life purpose to attain that state before death.

[anagami]

I totally agree; spirituality is something you do not something you study.
Like cooking. You can read as many cooking books you want but you will not become a chef until you get in the kitchen.
And yes; practice is the hardest thing. Especially when you have so many ties to the world and world problems.
I wish you good luck on your journey as well. It was a pleasure talking to you
Namaste