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Does your God visit a Strip Club?
- Thread starter The Adept
- Start date
Mycroft
Ministry of Serendipity
an omnipresent stripper?
Any deity that made sense to me would in some way be both the stripper and the audience.
Mycroft
Ministry of Serendipity
Sleeppy
Fatalist. Christian. Pacifist.
Is it much different than believing Jesus prays to Himself, and is a sacrifice to Himself?..
I don't think the logic is all that hard to follow. In certain kinds of mystical experiences, reality is perceived as either One -- that is, a single, grand unity -- or as the oneness of all things -- that is, as having an underlying unity despite an apparent diversity of things. In either case, there is a sense during those experiences of reality as ultimately beyond discrete things. And that One or oneness is often enough identified as deity. So, if those experiences have anything to do with deity -- which is a big if -- then logically, the audience and the stripper would in some sense be one.
Mycroft
Ministry of Serendipity
Which one?
Regardless, of those I actively worship, none of them could be said to "visit" such places. Such a term would be an improper anthropomorphism to me. The Spirit of Air, for example, does not "visit" places, it simply exists in places. Nor does it "care" it exists in a place of any kind, as "caring" is another anthropomorphism that I find to be improper.
Also... why the blazes did you capitalize "strip clubs?"
Maybe. I've known preachers who go to strip clubs, not to look at the strippers but to talk to the strippers. Sort of like Jesus eating with what others called "sinners".
Are any of your gods (actively worshiped or not) the protectors of strippers?
Something that once impressed me was reading in a book on ancient Rome of a temple in Rome that was dedicated to (among others) adulterers and adulteresses. If a person who had committed adultery was found out and could make it to the temple, they were safe from prosecution or revenge because the goddess of the temple was the protector of adulterers and adulteresses.
I've gone to strip clubs to meditate on fear and desire. It seems to me a logical place to meditate on those things, since you don't need to force yourself to experience fear and desire in a strip club. Just go there, pay non-judgmental attention to all that's going on within and without you, and see for yourself whether there is not a close and necessary link between fear and desire.
The Sum of Awe
Brought to you by the moment that spacetime began.
While I agree with what you said (both the audience and the stripper), but I don't think considering certain kinds of mystical experiences end with Monism is meaningful, because there have been many mystics who turned out to be dualists.
I'm following W. T. Stace on that point, but merely for the sake of convenience. Whether reality is ultimately monistic or dualistic is beyond my pay grade.
The Sum of Awe
Brought to you by the moment that spacetime began.
What is W.T Stace's point on it?
In my understanding, there are non-anthropomorphic spirits/gods attached to everything (animistic polytheism basically), so yeah, there'd technically be one for that. Not being a patron of such establishments or persons, it's not a set of spirits/gods I have any relationship with. The closest thing I'd have to any relationship with such a thing would be my occasional acknowledgment of Hellenic gods. I suspect protection of strippers would fall under the domain of Lady Aphrodite, so perhaps lighting that rose incense for her at MidVernal that was a minor nod to all things sex and sexiness, including strippers.
Hot damn, that's bloody brilliant.
I think for me going to one of those things, the meditation themes might not quite be those mentioned. If only the male stripper weren't an endangered species... *sigh*
Stace did a survey of the writings of several mystics. He found what he believed to be two strains of mysticism. The first strain was comprised of people who reported experiences of an underlying unity within nature, the oneness of all things. During their mystical experiences, the world, so to speak, was still in their field of perception. So, for instance, if they happened to be looking at a tree when their experience began, they could still see the tree as their experience progressed. But now the tree was -- or at least seemed to them -- to be part of a greater whole, a greater unity.
The second strain was comprised of people who reported experiences of complete and absolute Oneness. Those people reported that, as their experience began, all natural objects faded or blended into an undifferentiated One -- often described as a white light. They no longer saw trees, etc, but just white light.
The first strain tended to produce dualists. The second strain, if I recall, tended to produce monists.
Stace himself thought that the second strain represented the truer or more complete mystical experience. But I think that was just a prejudice of his. To me, the first strain is less artificially contrived than the second. But that's just a hunch, not a conclusion.
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Why do you post something like this?
Is it to mock believers? To make a point over my head? Just because (my guess)? I would ask if humor was the reason but there's nothing humorous in the post.