Heyo
Veteran Member
Nope. At least not according to my definition of "real".
5 Planes of Existence
Reality is real, i.e. things and forces measurable by a scientific instrument.
Concepts do exist, but they are not real.
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Theists Mostly: God
- Thread starter Rival
- Start date
5 Planes of Existence
Reality is real, i.e. things and forces measurable by a scientific instrument.
Concepts do exist, but they are not real.
Having a distinct existence outside of our subjective experience or understanding.
Yes, I do remember our discussion (with fondness). I still believe that it isn't so much a progression of understanding, but that God's truth is a wholeness of the different ways we perceive Him, and more.
Doing well, thank you. How have you been?
Not so much abstract as vague. Very often intentionally ill-defined, as well.
It is really quite the challenge to find two people who actually mean the same thing when they talk of "god". It is not even unusual for a single person to switch meanings according to circunstances and specific situations without realizing it.
But it is not generally desired to bring those clashes of understanding and perception to the surface. I feel that this unfortunate reality brings major damage to theistic groups, because it greatly hampers their abilities to mutually understand and course-correct and forces taking a lot indeed of bad with the good.
Leaving that aside, at their most useful, most dignified and most respectable deities are indeed abstract. Most of theistic merit comes from skillfully and ethically implementing them or perhaps most of all from using them as language constructs, arguably their natural and best role.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
Abstract in the sense of being neither tangible nor directly visible, perhaps. But I believe in a God who is personal, and who cares about us humans if we want Him (or Her) and need Him enough. That’s one reason why Christianity is still appealing to me even if, philosophically, Buddhism and Dharmic religions generally make more sense/are easier to justify to the modern educated mind. I believe in a God we can talk to, and upon whose firm and loving hand we can rely in times of crisis.
PearlSeeker
Well-Known Member
Appealing indeed but... wishful thinking?
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
Maybe. Has worked for me many times though, and works for me still.
Besides, isn’t wishful thinking generally more useful than negative thinking?
PearlSeeker
Well-Known Member
It used to work for me too. Now I am trying to accept and find value in the only certain and tangible reality - our impermanent and fragile existence.
Ever meet anybody who wasn't?
In the sense that Reality actually exists, but that none of our ideas about that Reality are actually that Reality itself, I agree. Our ideas about God, are just that. Ideas, or mental constructs. And when someone insists that what they believe about God to be the actuality of God, that is a form of delusion. Would you agree with that?
The progression of understanding is the nature of how perceptions change as we change and grow. What was true to us before in our thinking, is no longer as true to us now as it was before. When you say that "God's truth is a wholeness of the different way we perceive Him", what do you mean exactly? To me I take that to mean something akin to the poem of the Blind Men and the Elephant, where "each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong!"
I suppose in once sense however, God is actually the God of Fear and Hate, because that is what God is to some people (quite a many who preach the loudest about their beliefs, I'll add). That is what God is to them. That is what the impression of the Divine is upon their psyches and subsequent thoughts, which they then project out onto others in their judgements and condemnations of them.
But to others God is Love. That is reflective of the mirror of their own souls, or pysches. But is the "actuality" of God, that "concrete reality", as you seem to put it, actually Fear and Hate, because so many see God as this?
Personally I see God as absolute unconditional Love, but I say that because of direct experience with that, as opposed to merely being more a reflection of my own fears and anxieties, or hopes and desires, projected onto God mentally constructed to fill a need.
What is that 'actuality of the Divine'? Is it both Love and Terror, as both are reflections of how humans perceive God? Is God both good and evil, or neither? What is it you see as that "truth"?
Been well. Been progressing.
Mostly, though I think delusion is a strong word. Fallen prey to illusion, I would prefer. Confused the allegory for the reality.
I'm not a huge fan of the elephant analogy. Its symbolism is of deity as a passive participant to the discovery process, instead of the active instigator. God wants us to know Him as much as we can and works with and within us to improve our understanding.
I think of it more as colors being separated from white light by a prism. It's not that you are necessarily wrong that the light is red. White light always includes red light, but it is more as well.
Progress, growth, in my view is not gauged by what perception of God we have, when we consider God as person, God as nebulous force, God as co-present fundamental sustainer of existence, whether we see blue or red or violet, but the convergence back towards white.
Perhaps I should add a qualifier. I think what we see here is the difference between perception limiting our understanding and perception warping our understanding.
But, that's my perception. I see God as properly understood in certain contexts as wrathful, but that wrath is identifiable with love, not hate. And "there is no fear in love." That matches my experiences. I leave the rest to God.
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I would agree with this.
I'll agree with this as well. My use of the analogy was more about how people seem to belief that the truth is what they believe the truth is. But if we are to talk about the influence of God, that really is dependent upon the person's openness to hearing and seeing.
For some, God resides solely in their ideas and beliefs, and that's all. God of the head, can in fact be a spiritual avoidance of God of the heart. In such a case, they truly are blind like the men in the poem. God may be there, but if the resistance is strong, little to no light comes through.
But then there is blindness as well, where no color of light is recognized at all. But I would agree with the spectrum analogy for those who can see Light.
For instance, using the spectrum analogy in terms of Spiral Dynamics, if you are familiar with that, you can have the Red Jesus (warrior-tribalistic), the Amber Jesus (traditionalistic), the Orange Jesus (Modernist-Rational), the Green Jesus (Postmodernist-humanist), and so forth, all perceptions of God or Jesus, through that particular lens of the prism that they see reality in general through.
This of course ties directly into Fowler's Stages of Faith, which I'm pretty sure I must have mentioned in our previous conversations.
In one sense yes, in another sense no. From the perspective of perspectives, there are differences of depth that occur for anyone as the mature and develop within their own lifetimes, or for humanity as a whole over the millennia.
It would be considered progress to move from magic systems to rational systems, for instance, systems of justice based upon eye for an eye personal vengeance, versus a system of justice based upon representative government and trial by a jury of one's peers. These underlying worldviews (perspectives) have real-world differences in practice and are, and should be considered progress. I'm sure you'd agree.
However, to your point about moving towards a more "clear light" realization. With this I agree. But first I want to make a clarification (no pun intended).
What you mention above about God as a person; God as a Force; God as the Ground of Being (paraphrasing), I would not place those in the category of either a developmental matrix, or an Enlightenment context (that clearlight you alluded to). At any stage (magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic, or integral), God can be seen in any of these modes of relationships.
These are 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person perspectives, that everyone at any stage of growth or development (progress), can assume. The reason for that is because that is how we as humans relate ourselves to the world at all times, in 1st person subjective perspectives (God as the Ground of our own Being), 2nd person intersubjective relational perspectives (God as a relational personification, deity forms); and 3rd person impersonal objective (God as Spirit or Force).
As far as that seeing more of that spectrum as a whole, rather than the red, amber, orange, green, etc, slices, but seeing them all as individual expressions of that One Light, that is transcendence of structures altogether. That is Enlightenment. It's not a stage of development. That can happen at any stage, on any plane of the spectral prism.
So it's not anything that someone can abuse as a boast (I am more developed than you!). It actually obliterates those as having that sort of value judgements, which are reflective of the human ego at the various stages.
One can still understand the various stages as each more progressive than the stages before it, upon with they are all built, but the judgement of values are mitigated from that "God's eye" perspective, which does not place being 50 as better than being 5. Each are fully perfect where they are at, at that stage, for that stage. Put another way, a 12 year old is not a defective 21 year old.
There is that too. At any stage, we can have distortions that warp our thinking. All stages have their healthy expressions, as well as their dysfunctions.
That "wrath" of God view is an interesting one. I've come to see it as more about just simply going against the natural grain of nature, or "God" if you will. If you go against the grain, you get hurt. You experience "wrath" or disharmony. That "wrath" is inherent in the properties of that reality, and is experienced when we violate its "laws", so to speak.
So the wrath of God is more a metaphor for the experience of the suffering we incur for ourselves by being out of step with it (which is "sin", in other words). Trying to control the world, creates our own suffering. Surrender releases us from suffering.
But from another perspective, one can externalize this "wrath" as inflicted upon them, or against them by a willful entity. "The board was angry at me and gave me splinters", where the board is seen as an external agent acting upon them. That too is a matter of perspective.
Thoughts?
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Kelly of the Phoenix
Well-Known Member
Depends on the God?
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
I believe God has essense. He is more than an archetype.
Here, it appears you go back to an assumption of passivity.
I would agree with this in the understanding that "natural grain of nature", I do like "the Way" or "the Tao", is an active, intelligent, and purposeful actor in its attempt to draw you back to the grain. God, the deity, and the Tao are one and the same; the flow of existence is indistinguishable from the person of God. Not in a supercessionist way where one concept conforms to the other. Both the red and blue point back to the white, which does not lack red or blue, but has the purity of both.
If the board talked and told you it was an active agent who purposefully gave you a splinter, it would be a lot less of an issue of perspective. You would say your experience points to the reality of the board being an agent.
God is intelligent and purposeful, He speaks, etc.
I agree, I meant for people who are open to God and seeking God, as God seeks them.
Either my memory fails me or this is the first time I've seen it. Almost immediately I begin to disagree with much of the consideration of progress. Some of the transition to stage three and everything beyond, which coincides with the abandonment of Piaget corollary. I don't think that's actually coincidence.
But that depth doesn't come from one perspective over the others. There are many strict literalists who do not have a shallow theology or understanding of God. They have depth of wisdom with respect to that aspect, for lack of a better term, of God. What they lack is breadth.
I see a fundamental difference in how we interact with and relate to the world and how God and us meet and we explore God's reality, such that they aren't really comparable. God is an eternal reality and any genuine interaction with God will reflect some unchanging eternal reality of our deity.
If Moses, and I, really spoke to a person that is God, then that points to a reality of God having distinct personhood in some way.
That is, ultimately, the "mythic" deity points to a truth in God.
I disagree*, again because it isn't just how we relate to things, but how God willfully and actively engages us. We don't just perceive God in 2nd person because of perspective. God comes to us in a 2nd person because it is representative of His reality, at least allegorically, as a 2nd person.
*I believe that 1st person perceptions of God, self identity, are representative of illusory ideation or distortion.
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Psalm23
Well-Known Member
I have heard that before somewhere. It is something I feel trying to contemplate and understand that concept is something over my head. I don't rule it out as a possibility though if so, that doesn't mean God isn't nearby either. He is a God both near and far away and he fills both heaven and earth according to
Jeremiah 23:23-24.
Heyo
Veteran Member
It is easy if you know a bit about linguistics. "Out of" is "not in", and we have special short words for "not in time" and "not in space", they are "never" and "nowhere".
I guess you're not very well versed in this either
Heyo
Veteran Member
(-: It is syntactically correct. But I guess the inventors of that phrase had something semantically different in mind. It's up to them to explain it.I guess you're not very well versed in this either
