namaskaram , ....
jai jai , ....good more questions , ....
What do people think is gained from worship of God? ........Hmmm ....me thinks at first people worship God or gods wishing for some result , even just fot the clarity of mind to understand the nature of God , ...but as that understanding grows we come to the point of loving God so we worship out of pure adoration . ......what is gained ? ...Wisdom , ..Knowledge , ....Love , ...Compassion , .....and freedom from suffering .
Does suffering exist as a part of God? If suffering is a part of God, is it inherently good? ......... yes , in that everything is a part of God , ......but that suffering is as a result of our ignorance , therefore it becomes a part of our learning process , so in that respect it is only through suffering that we realise our seperation from the supreme , therefore through Knowledge suffering can be trancended , so yes , it is a nececary part of the process , ...without it we would not learn , therefore we would never atain knowledge of God .
Is God inherently good, bad or neutral? ...good and bad may be our concepts , ...God himself is .....eternaly blissfull and full of knowledge ,....this state of being could be described as neutral , ....because it just is , it is the true nature of phenomena ..there is no bad, no mallintent , .. therefore good as the antithesis canot be there either , ...but if we are talking about purity and truth then That is God , ...and from where we stand that is Good
Wonderful answers, the third especially is a really nice perspective, a great take.
namaskaram
Hmmm , ...but Vaisnavism is prehaps more prominent , ...so they say ? ... but this is not a competition ....
so forget I just said that , ...
Lets have more questions , ....
Then you win, ratikala
on the subject of morality , ...when we say 'goodness' ....might we mean Godliness ?
....in otherwords moraly just ?
For me, no, I don't think so. Because
everything is godly, absolutely everything. Goodness is a quality we ascribe to anything. But, as the Daoists say, everything is perfect.
I know you directed these questions to Ratikala but they're so interesting that I ask you to forgive me if I wasn't supposed to answer. I do like Ratikala's answers as well. My take on to what extent I am a manifestation of God is this - I believe God is Love (I think that most if not all Scriptures will be able to confirm this) so we as aspects of that Love is supposed to show love and in fact (if possible) be love to one another and even unto all living beings.
They were for everyone my friend, answer away
We're just about loving God on this thread.
So you can act as a channel for God? How beautiful.
It certainly feels as if God is only in some places at some times. I for one love to go to churches, temples, other places of worship and to nature as well because I always feel very close to God in such places. I think one of the reasons it feels like this is because we spent a lot of our time focusing on God in these specific places and also on specific times. But it shouldn't be this way - who should actually be focusing on God every where at all times. I agree with Ratikala that our perception gets in the way of understanding.
The body is a temple, and your body is the world...
But certainly, people make things sacred, and in that state of mind we can more easily feel the sublimity of the divine.
For me I gain peace and the closeness to God. I try not to think too much about what I can gain from worshiping God and instead just focus on making God happy and not myself. Rabiah (I think she was a Muslim saint or mystic) prayed: 'Lord if I worship You in fear of hell, throw me in it; if I worship You in hope of Paradise, keep me out. But Lord, if I worship You for thine sake alone, please draw close to me in all Your glory.'
That's an absolutely wonderful quote. I'd come across it before, but I didn't know who it was by. Just beautiful, beautiful, why ever do we separate ourselves from God, why do our minds draw away into hopping and jumping?
I'm not sure I understand this question completely - do you mean does God suffer or do you mean does God allow suffering? If it is the first - as I was raised Christian I've always been confused by the Jewish extreme anger of God and the Christian extreme sadness of God which I saw in the Bible and heard in Church. My father, for one, is completely unable to think that God might actually be laughing all the time or feeling nothing. As for me, I think God have various emotions and some of these might cause Him to suffer though I don't think it's in exactly the same way we think of suffering.
If it's the second - I think God does allow suffering, and before we go into the whole why does God allow suffering if He is Supreme - I think God allows it for us to grow spiritually whether this is being done consciously or unconsciously.
In both these cases I don't think it is good or bad but how we react and to it is what is important.
I meant more, is suffering, as it exists in the world, a part of God. It's more applicable for pantheists, panentheists and monists.
But your answers were still very interesting, and I admire your positive outlook on God.
I think morality comes from inside ourselves and may differ from culture to culture and from time to time. Almost 30 years ago Apartheid in South Africa was morally right for white South Africans and morally wrong for the rest of the world and now it is morally wrong to most of us. All of these groups can and did show from Scripture that their POV was the morally correct one and that it derived from God. I agree with the atheists on this one that morality is something we as humans individually and in our societies decide on. What's wrong for one might be right for the next and both of them may be truthful worshipers of God and say that they derive their morality from Him.
Right on, I agree with you fully. It's just stuff we decide all over the place.
I was still Conservative Christian in my ideas and fresh out of school when I went to minister to prisoners with my dad in 2005. While there was preaching and testimonies each of us had one prisoner designated to us with whom we had to have conversations on the love of God for them no matter what they did wrong on the outside. What I didn't know on the first and second day was that those prisoners who wanted to accept Jesus or needed prayer in general was taken to another room and that even when there was no prisoners in that room those who were on duty kept on praying and worshiping continuously. On the third and last day I was called together with my dad to help out in this room. As I walked into the room it felt as if I walked straight into a thick wall of mist or smoke, I felt a continuous tingling feeling all over my body and with each breath I took it felt as if my intestines floated. It was the weirdest most amazing experience I've ever had and made me realize that the more you worship God the more He will make His presence felt.
This is a great story, and it's lovely to see how you had such a great experience of God, and have found such devotion. A great thing.
This thread's been great, thankyou
@ratikala.
The experience of God is the thing of beauty, the zenith, all this other stuff people go on about, is God everything or a part of everything, inside or outside the universe, personal or impersonal, male or female or neither, what details, what trivia, when that matter is is the existence of God, why waste time with such little things, just open yourself up to God, drink God like water.