God About To Undergo Gender Reassignment Surgery

[Kangaroo Feathers]

Then why did you bother to say, "I think the thread title is needlessly inflammatory"? Normally people don't comment on things for no reason.

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...because I thought the title was written in such a way as to cause maximum dissent and upset.

 

[Skwim]

...because I thought the title was written in such a way as to cause maximum dissent and upset.

So what's wrong with disagreeing with the title? And why would people be upset over it? It's only a claim, which at worse might be considered silly.

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[Kangaroo Feathers]

So what's wrong with disagreeing with the title? And why would people be upset over it? It's only a claim, which at worse might be considered silly.

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I'm sure that you are aware of the emotional reaction some people have to the topic of gender reassignment, and I'm sure you know how attached, and defensive of, traditional ideas of God many people are. Finally, I'm sure you know how the two put together the way you phrased the title would be received by people. Don't play imply then deny. You wrote it intentionally trying to get a reaction out of stereotypical strawman Christians.

 

[Mister Emu]

That you don't relate to it, does not mean a great many more do. I'd argue that your view of God as "King" vs "Queen" is not how most people think of God as "Our Father" or "Our Mother". It's much more intimate, like that of a child and their parent, not potentate and subject.

I do believe that I named the intimate parental allegorical references first. I'd also say more people than you imply would agree with me that God is both Father and King, and much more; that our relationship is too complex and too wondrous to be confined to any mundane allegory.

You think instead in terms of strength and power, protection, decisiveness, action, etc. Those are culturally masculine traits.

Those are biologically masculine traits, they are associated with men because the increased testosterone produced in the male body gives greater strength and physical power, used to provide protection, and more assertiveness and decisiveness, which leads to action.

Masculinity and femininity exist solely, and are synonymous with maleness and femaleness, because of our sexual dimorphism, you can't divorce the words from that.

They are touchstones for us, ways to relate ourselves to God

I view any attempt to relate to God via our masculinity or femininity as a set up for failure at best, and if you are actively wanting to experience or understand femininity or masculinity in the divine any interaction is going to be poisoned by the vanity of wanting to see your maleness or femaleness reflected in God.

I think when it comes to theological questions, where it is a conceptual, mental thing, I would agree to divide God up into either/or, or any sort of duality can mess someone up.

Well, then we ultimately agree in principle. I just don't think it is a good start to begin with something that necessitates later correction.

 

[Skwim]

I'm sure that you are aware of the emotional reaction some people have to the topic of gender reassignment,

Not to the extent that a mere title would bother them.

and I'm sure you know how attached, and defensive of, traditional ideas of God many people are.

Okay, and they should care so much what I think that this would inflame them? Get serious!

Finally, I'm sure you know how the two put together the way you phrased the title would be received by people.

Like the vast majority? Yes I do. And the vast majority would never get bent out of shape as you have, but simply open the post and see what it's all about. Your mole hill > mountain here is amusing, but that's all it is.

You wrote it intentionally trying to get a reaction out of stereotypical strawman Christians.

And just who are these "stereotypical strawman Christians" you speak of? Here I'll help you out.

Stereotypical strawman Christians are Christians who _____________________________________________________________________________________ .

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[Windwalker]

I do believe that I named the intimate parental allegorical references first. I'd also say more people than you imply would agree with me that God is both Father and King, and much more; that our relationship is too complex and too wondrous to be confined to any mundane allegory.

I guess the whole "King" thing never resonated with me. I would have no frame of reference never have lived under a monarchy. But come to think about it, to envision God as King creates this illusion of separation, God above and man below, which itself is a theological thing obscuring the Reality of God.

Masculinity and femininity exist solely, and are synonymous with maleness and femaleness, because of our sexual dimorphism, you can't divorce the words from that.

I don't agree with this. I think identifying male and female with masculine and feminine respectively, is something pushed for by culture, but the reality of it is the spectrum across the genders is really all over the place. And yes, in the light of what I just stated, the reality of God is like that entire Spectrum in One. What face of God we want to touch, which aspect of masculine or feminine do we need at that moment?

I view any attempt to relate to God via our masculinity or femininity as a set up for failure at best, and if you are actively wanting to experience or understand femininity or masculinity in the divine any interaction is going to be poisoned by the vanity of wanting to see your maleness or femaleness reflected in God.

This is a mistake. The reality of coming to know God involves us transversing our own interior landscapes. That mean reaching out to God, you have to navigate the depths of your psyche and your soul. There you will encounter those bridges between the Deep and your soul with you in the middle. These are the realms of Archetypes. This is where you encounter the Divine Feminine, Grace, Love, Compassion with her arms guiding you to Herself and beyond. This is where another time you encounter the Divine Masculine, and so forth.

Each of these draw forth from within us a reaching beyond, to the Infinite, to the "God beyond God", or Godhead. It reaches into our lives as humans here on earth, knowing that Grace around us in the arms of our parents as we were born into this world. We connect to the Infinite through the arms of God as our parents. This is a path to God, through God to us.

 

[Willamena]

...because I thought the title was written in such a way as to cause maximum dissent and upset.

It was kind of amusing.

 

[Mister Emu]

But come to think about it, to envision God as King creates this illusion of separation, God above and man below,

Which is reality. We are not God, nor are we of the essence of God. We are separate and less than divine.

I think identifying male and female with masculine and feminine respectively, is something pushed for by culture

You are completely ignoring the biological basis for why the different sexes have different propensities for expressing the traits we deem masculine and feminine. Testosterone increases muscle mass and makes people more decisive. That is why those traits are masculine and identified with the male. Because men have significantly more testosterone.

If the traits were merely cultural, you'd find that different cultures had widely varying ideas of masculinity and femininity. But, that really isn't the case, because, again, those traits/behaviors are directly tied to biological realities.

And yes, in the light of what I just stated, the reality of God is like that entire Spectrum in One.

Exactly, God isn't masculine or feminine. He is divine. He is all of the virtuous traits all of the time. God is always comforting, welcoming, powerful, correcting, bolstering, wrathful of evil, joyful of good, etc.

These are the realms of Archetypes. This is where you encounter the Divine Feminine, Grace, Love, Compassion with her arms guiding you to Herself and beyond. This is where another time you encounter the Divine Masculine, and so forth.

I can't disagree more forcefully. You always encounter God wholly, never partially and never by means of archetype. At least never in my experience.

 

[Windwalker]

I can't disagree more forcefully. You always encounter God wholly, never partially and never by means of archetype. At least never in my experience.

Please describe your experience. I am willing to share my own, as personal as that is.

 

[Mister Emu]

Please describe your experience.

I find it difficult to properly put into words. But, I'll try. It is the core my existence, my being my soul, being enveloped, embraced, infused, saturated, I'm not sure there's a proper word for it, by the immanent divine. Feeling and knowing love, comfort, security, belonging. Clarity and truth as well, your soul laid bare and still wanted with fervor. Impetus and guidance, the righteous path burning within me. It is wonder and awe, and I have tears just thinking about it.

Sorry if that makes little sense.

 

[Windwalker]

I find it difficult to properly put into words. But, I'll try. It is the core my existence, my being my soul, being enveloped, embraced, infused, saturated, I'm not sure there's a proper word for it, by the immanent divine. Feeling and knowing love, comfort, security, belonging. Clarity and truth as well, your soul laid bare and still wanted with fervor. Impetus and guidance, the righteous path burning within me. It is wonder and awe, and I have tears just thinking about it.

Sorry if that makes little sense.

To someone with his own experience of the Divine, it makes sufficient sense. Saying it is the core of one's own existence is a good way to convey the depth of it. That is true for myself as well.

However, to say that, "You always encounter God wholly, never partially and never by means of archetype," doesn't register as true to me. One does not "always" encounter God wholly. To encounter God that way, utterly dissolves you. There is no more seeker and the sought. All that was an illusion where you can now say paradoxically, "I live, yet not I but Christ in me".

But that is not the only way one is exposed to or experiences the Divine Reality, or comes to know the Divine. One can touch the face of the Divine in form, in anything, if our eyes are opened to see it. You are touching God through an expression of the Divine, through creation. Those expressions of the Divine are like fingers pointing to the moon, but are not the moon itself. One can see God in the face of a little child, and open the Divine in all of Life. But as long as there is a "you" seeing "God", or experiencing God as "other" in any sense, that is not "God wholly", yet in a sense is when you realize that form is not other to God and God is not other to form.

However, being human we experience God with the mind as "other" to us. This necessitates a "mediated" reality. Unless you are talking nondual states of Awareness, you are in fact dealing with partialities. A dualistic God, is a symbolic God. The Christian mystic Meister Eckhart prayed, "I pray God make me free of God [dualistic images of the mind], that I may know God in his unconditioned being". That is nonduality, "God beyond God." The dualistic God, is a "face" of the Divine, a finger pointing to the moon, an "archetype".

There is this fantastic explanation of this I came across in a book I read a few years ago by the Integral philosopher Ken Wilber which touches on this role of the archetype in encounters with the Divine. This is what I'm trying to get at, as difficult as this is conceptually to convey.

"But this is not God as an ontological other, set apart from the cosmos, from humans, and from creation at large. Rather, it is God as an archetypal summit of one's own Consciousness. John Blofeld quotes Edward Conze on the Vajrayana Buddhist viewpoint: " 'It is the emptiness of everything which allows the identification to take place - the emptiness [which means "transcendental openness" or "nonobstruction"] which is in us coming together with the emptiness which is the deity. By visualizing that identification 'we actually do become the deity. The subject is identified with the object of faith. The worship, the worshiper, and the worshiped, those three are not separate' ". At its peak, the soul becomes one, literally one, with the deity-form, with the dhyani-buddha, with (choose whatever term one prefers) God. One dissolves into Deity, as Deity - that Deity which, from the beginning, has been one's own Self or highest Archetype."​

It is though form, we can see and encounter the Formless. To use the imagery of St. John from the Gospel of John, we can see this expressed. God being the Infinite Formless, expresses its being through Logos. Logos is the Expressing of God, the Manifesting of God. The Logos is the Agent of manifestation between the Formless and Unknowable, and form or the knowable. This Logos continued this nature of manifesting in the person of Jesus, according to John when, "The Logos became flesh and we beheld his glory". Jesus now is the "representation of God" in human form. This highest realization of the Divine in the human form, is an archetype. Jesus as the Son of God, is an archetype. The Divine Father, or the Divine Mother, too are archetypes, and bridge that divide between Dualism and Nonduality. The Logos is a "mediator" between man (duality), and God (nonduality).

While I have experiences of the Divine in very direct, transcendent ways, I also experience the Divine in form, in dualistic ways, understanding that this is the nature of the human mind, rather than being a fact of God. It is a fact of the human mind, experiencing the divine through form. The highest expressions of form touching into the Divine reality, are the Archetype. "There is one God and one mediator between God and man", is an Archetype of the Divine.

 

[blü 2]

Thoughts and comments: .

Great topic.

I think the idea of Wisdom being distinct from God would explain a lot.

But Jesus isn't a girl. He's a Swede with long wavy chestnut locks about to drive his Volvo to a toga party, his hair beautifully shampooed and his crease-resistant robes dazzling white to match his beautiful teeth. I've seen the pictures, I tell ya, thousands of 'em!

 

[Mister Emu]

To encounter God that way, utterly dissolves you. There is no more seeker and the sought. All that was an illusion where you can now say paradoxically, "I live, yet not I but Christ in me".

Unless I misunderstand what you are expressing here, it doesn't merely fail to ring true. My experience with God has never once assault, dissolved, or threatened my identity. Divine contact bolsters; God completes me, not subsumes.

It is one of the reasons that Eastern 'transcendental' experiences have always seemed off, like meat just turned or newly soured milk. Divine experience doesn't remove the self or show the self to be illusion, it uplifts the self. It doesn't show that our distinct differences are false, it overcomes them to bring us together, not as one being but as beings in unity.

But as long as there is a "you" seeing "God", or experiencing God as "other" in any sense, that is not "God wholly", yet in a sense is when you realize that form is not other to God and God is not other to form.

Well I'm just going to disagree viscerally from this point on I imagine. True experience with the divine reinforces the "you".

John Blofeld quotes Edward Conze on the Vajrayana Buddhist viewpoint

Ahh, there's the call to buddhist understanding.

Jesus now is the "representation of God" in human form. This highest realization of the Divine in the human form, is an archetype. Jesus as the Son of God, is an archetype.

And there's the lessening of the incarnation. Jesus isn't a representation. He is God, full and in whole, manifest as a human. He isn't an archetype to mediate duality and non-duality, He mediates the metaphysical wounds we create, the blight we spread on existence, the sickness we inculcate within ourselves, our failure to be(whatever imagery you want to use). The sin that causes the separation of our being from ecstatic union.

 

[Milton Platt]

.​

A few excerpted comments.

The Episcopal Church has decided to revise its 1979 prayer book, so that God is no longer referred to by masculine pronouns.

The prayer book, first published in 1549 and now in its fourth edition, is the symbol of unity for the Anglican Communion. The Anglican Communion is the third largest Christian communion founded in 1867. While there is no clear timeline for the changes, religious leaders at the denomination’s recent triennial conference in Austin have agreed to a demand to replace the masculine terms for God such as “He” and “King” and “Father.”

Indeed, early Christian writings and texts, all refer to God in feminine terms.

In fact, the personal name of God, Yahweh, which is revealed to Moses in Exodus 3, is a remarkable combination of both female and male grammatical endings. The first part of God’s name in Hebrew, “Yah,” is feminine, and the last part, “weh,” is masculine. In light of Exodus 3, the feminist theologian Mary Daly asks, “Why must ‘God’ be a noun? Why not a verb – the most active and dynamic of all.”

In the New Testament, Jesus also presents himself in feminine language. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus stands over Jerusalem and weeps, saying, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”

Furthermore, the author of Matthew equates Jesus with the feminine Sophia (wisdom), when he writes, “Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” In Matthew’s mind, it seems that Jesus is the feminine Wisdom of Proverbs, who was with God from the beginning of creation. In my opinion, I think it is very likely that Matthew is suggesting that there is a spark of the feminine in Jesus’ nature.

Additionally, in his letter to the Galatians, written around 54 or 55 A.D., Paul says that he will continue “in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.”

Clearly, feminine imagery was acceptable among the first followers of Jesus.
source


​

Thoughts and comments:

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Maybe they should follow suite with the priests.....

 

[Ellen Brown]

Maybe they should follow suite with the priests.....

That's why people should read and study their sacred documents and do as they say according to their own mind. I question the validity of religious leaders.

 

[Windwalker]

Unless I misunderstand what you are expressing here, it doesn't merely fail to ring true. My experience with God has never once assault, dissolved, or threatened my identity. Divine contact bolsters; God completes me, not subsumes.

An assault or a threat to your identity is not the correct way to state this. When I said it dissolves, that means the false image of ourselves we held in our minds as who we thought we really were. Our true identity, is not the mistaken-identity of the egoic self. Nothing goes away, so long as we remain alive. But we now see ourselves as God does. "Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face." What dissolves, is our separation from the Divine. We never were other than that, in Reality. We become who we really are, "completes" as you put it, in God

It is one of the reasons that Eastern 'transcendental' experiences have always seemed off, like meat just turned or newly soured milk.

It's interesting you see that as a negative. I would suspect it's because you have an incorrect understanding of what it means. If you are experiencing God, that is a transcendent experience.

Divine experience doesn't remove the self or show the self to be illusion, it uplifts the self. It doesn't show that our distinct differences are false, it overcomes them to bring us together, not as one being but as beings in unity.

There is something I think you do not understand. There are different types, or categories or stages of mystical experiences. Researches have mapped these out, based on studies of these, what can be summarized beginning with nature mysticism, then in order deity mysticism, then causal mysticism, and at the top nondual mysticism. Each of those can be further defined within them, such as low and high causal, and such. What it sounds like you are describing fits under deity mysticism.

I'll share something personal here about my own experiences. When I was 18 I had a life-altering experience of the Divine which blew the roof off the world as I knew it. I had a second, even more powerful experience shortly afterward. While they were both the Absolute, while both were the veil being pulled back and experiencing God beyond words or any possible means to convey it, they were experienced differently. They were the same Source, but different experiences of it.

For my life ever since that, seeking to find my way Home, I had always held that as the "Ultimate" experience, that God would be exactly that, and nothing short of that. Greater seemed an impossibility to me. You can't go higher than the highest, seems to have been my thinking about that. That was and is untrue.

While deity mysticism is truly powerful and is a direct experience of the Divine, life-changing at the core to be sure!, it is not all there it to plumbing the depths and opening to the unfolding Glory within us. It is our limited minds that place boxes around God, and thus limit us. This is why the Christian Mystic Meister Eckhart said, "God beyond God". He was plumbing those higher and deeper depths of the Divine, moving beyond the profound deity mysticism states, into causal and nondual states of the Divine.

When we "dissolve" into God, that is Unity. I am still this person I've been in this world my whole life, but the Knowledge of who I am, is not limited to this body, nor this "person" that I look at in the mirror and call "Me". "I and my Father are One", becomes something well understood at this point. God is not other to me, but my very Breath. What is not Eternal, is this sack of skin, including that separate "ego-self" which dies with the body. Spirit is not separate from Spirit.

Well I'm just going to disagree viscerally from this point on I imagine. True experience with the divine reinforces the "you".

I would hope not. I have a lot I don't want to reinforce! The false self dissolves, yes, and the true Self shines, yes. But confirming I'm just some neurotic monkey with an oversized brain who imagines whatever thought chattering from the debris field of the mind as real reality? No thanks! Encountering God, makes all that go away, and lets only that which is True, remain. All of what I believed to be true, was an illusion.

That is what is meant by "the world is illusion". It's the illusion we are really seeing what is really there. 99.99% of us, don't.

Ahh, there's the call to buddhist understanding.

I find no issue with that. Experience of the Divine is not limited to Christians. We have no reason to block knowledge from others in this regard. Wilful ignorance is not a spiritual quality.

And there's the lessening of the incarnation. Jesus isn't a representation. He is God, full and in whole, manifest as a human.

Obviously, the flesh was not what we call God. God is Eternal Life. While you say Jesus isn't a representation, I offer this scripture in response, "The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being".

He isn't an archetype to mediate duality and non-duality, He mediates the metaphysical wounds we create, the blight we spread on existence, the sickness we inculcate within ourselves, our failure to be(whatever imagery you want to use). The sin that causes the separation of our being from ecstatic union.

Christ who represents the divine to us in the person of Jesus, mediates between the world of illusion and Truth, the worlds of darkness and Light. I see this as a bridge that we walk over, a door we pass through to the other side as it will. The Archetype of the soul, is that which the soul focuses on in order to pass over into what it invites and points the way to itself. The "sin" or illusion, is removed in the Truth. No sin, no illusion, exists in God. And that can and does happen here, in this life.

 

[Milton Platt]

That's why people should read and study their sacred documents and do as they say according to their own mind. I question the validity of religious leaders.

If one is going to do according to one's own mind, no need for the documents. Anything open to interpretation is open to misinterpretation.

 

[Mister Emu]

But we now see ourselves as God does.

This I agree with, with the addition that we also see with clarity and get a touch of what we could and hopefully will be after our death.

What dissolves, is our separation from the Divine. We never were other than that, in Reality

When you say separation, I read "metaphysical distinction from". Do I misapprehend? You are saying that your experience leads you to say we are fundamentally of the divine essence? Panentheism or something akin to it? I am happy to be incorrect in my understanding of what you are saying.

It's interesting you see that as a negative. I would suspect it's because you have an incorrect understanding of what it means.

Entirely possible.

There is something I think you do not understand. There are different types, or categories or stages of mystical experiences.

Oh no, I do understand that there are different "levels" for lack of a better word. What you seem to not understand is that no true experience of God invalidates any part of previous true experiences of God. As you yourself say later "no illusion, exists in God". There won't be a moment where God pulls a curtain back "aha! everything up to now was but a trick, here is the real truth" so to speak.

And if that were the case, how could you look at what you have now as the real truth compared to the previous illusion with any confidence? You've opened yourself to the idea of everything before being false, so there very well could be a level beyond what you currently claim that shows actually the reality you see now is the illusion, ad infinitum.

Researches have mapped these out, based on studies of these, what can be summarized beginning with nature mysticism, then in order deity mysticism, then causal mysticism, and at the top nondual mysticism.

That sounds a whole lot like the common failing of taking different conclusions and placing them in hierarchies instead of basing the hierarchy off the method used to reach the conclusion. For instance, Robert Zaehner placed theistic/deity mysticism as the highest form and others below it. He was roundly criticized for giving prominence to his personal views, and I imagine that whoever the researchers you subscribe to who claim that non-dualism is the pre-eminent form of mystical experience face much the same.

I'll share something personal here about my own experiences. When I was 18 I had a life-altering experience of the Divine which blew the roof off the world as I knew it. I had a second, even more powerful experience shortly afterward...

Thank you for sharing.

This is why the Christian Mystic Meister Eckhart said, "God beyond God". He was plumbing those higher and deeper depths of the Divine, moving beyond the profound deity mysticism states, into causal and nondual states of the Divine.

Meister Eckhart maintained his orthodoxy unto his death, and vociferously fought allegations of heretical understanding of his words.

When we "dissolve" into God, that is Unity. I am still this person I've been in this world my whole life, but the Knowledge of who I am, is not limited to this body, nor this "person" that I look at in the mirror and call "Me". "I and my Father are One", becomes something well understood at this point.

It is a constant experience when I read your posts where I'm nodding my head, agreeing and then...

God is not other to me, but my very Breath. What is not Eternal, is this sack of skin, including that separate "ego-self" which dies with the body.

you go completely off the rails. Despite your claim of superior mystical insight into the divine, it feels more like we were climbing together and you just decided to jump off the side of the mountain. Any sense of new height you gain is false.

I would hope not. I have a lot I don't want to reinforce!

Hah, me too. Luckily, that stuff we don't want reinforced isn't our personal essence, it is as you say, illusory. Our inner chaff removed from the wheat, the impurities burned off in purgation, etc.

But confirming I'm just some neurotic monkey with an oversized brain who imagines whatever thought chattering from the debris field of the mind as real reality?

I never said that. Humanity, being a human is so much more than the material. But I am human, my spirit is human, and when I am with God my "me-ness" doesn't diminish. I'm more me than I've ever been, more fully human, and I know the perfect me to come in the fullness of eternal unity.

I find no issue with that.

My apologies, that was unbecoming. Obviously, I have no attained theosis. Buddhists do have wisdom to share.

Obviously, the flesh was not what we call God.

We disagree. I take the divine flesh into me every time I am called to altar for communion.

While you say Jesus isn't a representation, I offer this scripture in response, "The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being".

Interestingly, my Bible doesn't say that.

As I said, it seems we will just disagree. I'm not going to abandon the truths god has revealed because someone claims to be on a higher plane of spiritual and mystical understanding than me. I don't think you're going to suddenly going to abandon your ideas that you are not other than the divine merely because of my strong conviction and relationship with the transcendent "other" creator god.

 

[Windwalker]

This I agree with, with the addition that we also see with clarity and get a touch of what we could and hopefully will be after our death.

I think there is a truth to this. Rather, more how I've come to see it is that what "heaven" is, who we are in that state, is fully possible right here and now. I find looking to an "afterlife" to be a distraction from the Eternal in every present moment. Looking for heaven, not realizing you're already there.

When you say separation, I read "metaphysical distinction from". Do I misapprehend? You are saying that your experience leads you to say we are fundamentally of the divine essence? Panentheism or something akin to it? I am happy to be incorrect in my understanding of what you are saying.

I would say in speaking of God I align more with a panenthiest view, yes. I see Creation arising from God, and God in all that is, so there is both transcendence and immanence. I particularly like that because it is paradoxical, and the nature of God is paradoxical. Pantheism is too "scientific". Theism tends more to too removed from the world, too aloof. God is far too much Present to be wholly transcendent save for a few miracles here and there dotted throughout history. My experience of God becomes far too immanent to think of God in terms of "up there" somewhere looking down from above.

As far as "separation" goes, my view is that the only thing separating us from God is our perceptual sense of self. We see ourselves as separate from others, and we imagine God as some entity "out there" like an "other", and that becomes the reality of our experience. Until we let God accidently come blasting through some crack we allowed. Then the Light that shines there tells you in no uncertain terms, God was never anywhere but fully Present the whole time.

Experience has shown to me, that all the times God is "hidden", is simply nothing other than us not seeing. We don't see, because we are turned inward facing our own mind and thoughts, looking to them to see God; the right idea, the right concept, the right belief, the right practice, stopping this or that, etc. All the while God is standing right there waiting for you to turn around and simple see. Stop the nonsense world of the imaginary mind-world, and see Reality.

That is when the separation dissolves. It was only our minds looking to itself to find God in the mind.

What you seem to not understand is that no true experience of God invalidates any part of previous true experiences of God.

That is an incorrect assumption. If I said anything that sounds like that, it certainly doesn't reflective my thinking. I do understanding that all experiences of the Divine are valid. How we understand what they are however, unlike the experiences, are not Absolute.

The understandings we have when we are young about mystical states, is not the end of our awareness growing. We tend to reify our understanding of these experiences as "what it was". That understanding is valid at that time, but that understanding can grow and deepen with age and experience. I value the truth of what it was to me and that time, and the times following it. Why would we invalidate our thoughts and feelings and ideas we held when we were young? We were young.

And if that were the case, how could you look at what you have now as the real truth compared to the previous illusion with any confidence?

I don't. I had a perceptual understanding of things then, and I do now. And I will in the future, yet another level of understanding building on the previous experiences. I would not hopefully invalidate what I am saying today because it's not what I don't yet see tomorrow. It's perfectly valid for me to say what I see now, based on the wealth of my previous experiences and ideas. I'm also not going to invalidate myself tomorrow by claiming right now I have the real truth. What I do have, is a fuller understanding. That's not an absolute.

You've opened yourself to the idea of everything before being false, so there very well could be a level beyond what you currently claim that shows actually the reality you see now is the illusion, ad infinitum.

Yes, that creates quite the trap for us if we think in those terms. I think a lot of people do.

I imagine that whoever the researchers you subscribe to who claim that non-dualism is the pre-eminent form of mystical experience face much the same.

I don't want to go the route of debating sources at this point, rather I would point to my own personal experiences. I recognize different depths of experiences. I value them all as equally Divine and perfect and whole. There are what I can handle, it seems. It is a mistake for me to say "this is it" and assume there is some end to God.

Meister Eckhart maintained his orthodoxy unto his death, and vociferously fought allegations of heretical understanding of his words.

Yes, and critics there were! This is what happens when one pushes beyond the bounds of acceptable theologies the scholars have decided teach us of God. "Authorities say", he was fond of musing.

It is a constant experience when I read your posts where I'm nodding my head, agreeing and then...

lol! I love it.

you go completely off the rails. Despite your claim of superior mystical insight into the divine, it feels more like we were climbing together and you just decided to jump off the side of the mountain. Any sense of new height you gain is false.

Well, I'm not sure where you have gotten the idea I am claiming superior insight. I have insight, yes. So do you, I am sensing. You have insight to share as well. I like seeing where discussion can lead and what either of us may learn from each other.

As far as my claim that, "God is not other to me, but my very Breath", is off the rails, I'll try to put in another way. When there is experienced a dissolution of that boundary between you and God, your heart and God's heart beat as one. You breathe as one.

Interestingly, as I was typing this just now, I recall a quote I read from Meister Eckhart probably about 6 years ago I used to love, but had not thought of in years. Let me quote this and see if you see the same thing I just said about breathing as one.

"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."​

That is absolutely beautiful, and absolutely true. One breath. One heart. One mind. One seeing. One knowing. One love. "I and my Father, are One".

Hah, me too. Luckily, that stuff we don't want reinforced isn't our personal essence, it is as you say, illusory. Our inner chaff removed from the wheat, the impurities burned off in purgation, etc.

Yes, burning off the impurities is the removing of the illusions. That is the spiritual path.

But I am human, my spirit is human, and when I am with God my "me-ness" doesn't diminish. I'm more me than I've ever been, more fully human, and I know the perfect me to come in the fullness of eternal unity.

I think there is something that may help get past the understanding that the self "dissolves" into God. The "unique self", that "me-ness" is still present, but it is the true Self. It becomes your "authentic self".

The illusion is not incorrect ideas, but a misperception of ourselves and reality. It is an optical illusion of sorts. Like as you are saying that in finding and connecting with God you are "more fully human," and I'd add "alive", is what it means to be "purified". "I was blind, but now I see", is a common refrain. The scales of illusion, the illusory world of our imagined reality, falls off and the eyes see what was there all along. It becomes perfectly obvious to us.

At a point, being Adam in the Garden alive in the world of God's creation, gives way to the quiet of the night and losing yourself wholly in God where you are both here on earth in this life, and in Eternity.

 

[crossfire]

If it's useful to call God "He" to denote a patriarchal relationship, then can you answer why it is not useful to call God "She" to denote a matriarchal relationship? You say it's theologically useless, yet admit it is useful in this context. Why is it ok for the Divine Masculine, but not the Divine Feminine?


Yet, you called referring to God as "He" is "useful". Do you object to those who want to say "She" then for those same reasons?

Perhaps because of the idolatry thing? (Women are often viewed as objects, which is idolatry in itself. Apply this to god.) *passes Windwalker some popcorn*