this is heather
anonymous
July 28 2008, 05:03:04 UTC
"most of us grow up with at least an idea of religious tradition. I we are not committed to a particular religious perspective ourselves, we have close friends or relatives who are, and who deeply believe in the tenets of their faiths. I firmly believe that most people who are committed in this way to a particular religion are acting on an honest inner drive to keep its unique contributions alive in the world. This common impulse guarantees the larger human society a wide diversity of religious beliefs through which we can explore many options and thus grow. In my opinion, each positive religious perspective contains an important part of the truth. The general dialogue between the various religions, as vague and fragmented as it is, nonetheless is critical to our ongoing evolution toward a better overall spiritual understanding. Our perception of synchronicity in itself does not suggest that any one religious tradition is more advantageous than another. . .all major relgions - hindu, buddhist, jewish, chritstian, islamic - as well as many shamanic traditions share the notion of being responsive to the will of God. To put it differently, all are concerned with our growth toward unity with a Godhead or coming into communion with a creative force behind the human condition... Central to this particular church's theology was the conversion experience, the acceptance of christianity. But the implicit assumption was that afterward one had to discover and then follow God's will for one's own life. As a child I was frustrated because no one ever discussed in detail how one might go about finding and following God's will. Of course, this was at a time when society was the height of its secular, materialistic attitude. Yet I was full of questions: What is the nature of this God with whom we must commune? How is this divine presence really experienced? What does being in allignment with divine intention really feel like? To these questions, the other church members had no answers. But the look on their faces made me realize that they knew; they just had no words with which to express it."
-The Celestine Vision by James Redfield
My friend heather found this and wanted to share it with you :) hope it helps
Re: this is heatherreallyfledJuly 28 2008, 05:32:22 UTC
Actually my response to this is highly controversial, and is a question I have... something I am wrestling with- an issue I have with the church. When he says, the looks on their faces said that they knew, but didn't have "words with which to express it"... well, most of my experience, this is not the case. And also, concerning the things where this is the case, there is a stereotype that has been built... a conventionalist construct that the Christian Protestant Church in Western Civilization has built... that says if you don't fit a certain mold down to a T - your ideals, your mode of rationalizing the world and occurrences, how you feel, how you look, what you listen to and watch, EVEN, the tone of your voice when you talk- then you aren't a good Christian. In fact, some say you aren't a Christian at all. I might be wrong, hopefully I am, but it is likely that his experience with these other church members are the same things that haven't ever made sense to me, and are the things I am alienated for within the two churches I've been a member of in my life. This is to say, I'd say they don't know. Most "church" people I know base these sort of things on the concrete and say that it is abstract, or they base their entire approach on superficial aspects. I am not undermining the church or Christianity... but I am calling for a reformation.
Re: this is heather
anonymous
July 28 2008, 08:56:34 UTC
there was another paragraph before the last one that i posted. I should have included it before but Heather was getting tired of typing. " I can remember wondering about this question of doing God's will as a young child growing up in a rural protestant church. There was no doubt in my mind,even then, that this particular church and the surrounding community were special. Community support and loving interaction still led to the barn raisings and a quick response to sicknessin a member's family. The ProtestantChristianity the members practiced was suprisingly open and nonjudgmental for that time." These are just quotes from a book, I'm not a Christian(and I'm disagreeing with it either, It's just not my personal belief) He also states in the preface: "We know now that one actually has to suspend or "bracket" skepticism and try in every way possible to open up to spiritual phenomena in order to experience them. We must "knock on the door," as it has been expressed in Scripture, before any of these spiritual experiences can even be detected at all. If we approach spiritual experience with a mind that is too closed and doubting, we perceive nothing and thereby prove to ourselves, quite erroneously and repeatedly, that higher spiritual experience is a myth. For centuries, we cast out these perceptions not because they weren't real, but because at the time, we didn't want them to be real. They didn't fit into our secular view of the world. As we shall see in greater detail later, this skeptical attitude gained supremacy in the seventeenth century because the failing medieval worldview it succeeded was so full of contrived theories, charlatans on power trips, hexes and salvation for sale, and all manner of insanity. In this setting, thinking people longed for an established, scientific description of the physical universe that cut through all the nonsense. We wanted to see the world around us as reliable and natural. We wanted to be free of all the superstition and myth, and create a world where we could develop economic security- without thinking that strange and weird things were going to popup in the dark and scare us. Because of this need, we understandably began the modern age with an overly materialisticand simplified view of the universe." ...
Our perception of synchronicity in itself does not suggest that any one religious tradition is more advantageous than another. . .all major relgions - hindu, buddhist, jewish, chritstian, islamic - as well as many shamanic traditions share the notion of being responsive to the will of God. To put it differently, all are concerned with our growth toward unity with a Godhead or coming into communion with a creative force behind the human condition...
Central to this particular church's theology was the conversion experience, the acceptance of christianity. But the implicit assumption was that afterward one had to discover and then follow God's will for one's own life. As a child I was frustrated because no one ever discussed in detail how one might go about finding and following God's will. Of course, this was at a time when society was the height of its secular, materialistic attitude. Yet I was full of questions: What is the nature of this God with whom we must commune? How is this divine presence really experienced? What does being in allignment with divine intention really feel like? To these questions, the other church members had no answers. But the look on their faces made me realize that they knew; they just had no words with which to express it."
-The Celestine Vision by James Redfield
My friend heather found this and wanted to share it with you :) hope it helps
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I am not undermining the church or Christianity... but I am calling for a reformation.
Reply
" I can remember wondering about this question of doing God's will as a young child growing up in a rural protestant church. There was no doubt in my mind,even then, that this particular church and the surrounding community were special. Community support and loving interaction still led to the barn raisings and a quick response to sicknessin a member's family. The ProtestantChristianity the members practiced was suprisingly open and nonjudgmental for that time."
These are just quotes from a book, I'm not a Christian(and I'm disagreeing with it either, It's just not my personal belief)
He also states in the preface: "We know now that one actually has to suspend or "bracket" skepticism and try in every way possible to open up to spiritual phenomena in order to experience them. We must "knock on the door," as it has been expressed in Scripture, before any of these spiritual experiences can even be detected at all.
If we approach spiritual experience with a mind that is too closed and doubting, we perceive nothing and thereby prove to ourselves, quite erroneously and repeatedly, that higher spiritual experience is a myth. For centuries, we cast out these perceptions not because they weren't real, but because at the time, we didn't want them to be real. They didn't fit into our secular view of the world.
As we shall see in greater detail later, this skeptical attitude gained supremacy in the seventeenth century because the failing medieval worldview it succeeded was so full of contrived theories, charlatans on power trips, hexes and salvation for sale, and all manner of insanity. In this setting, thinking people longed for an established, scientific description of the physical universe that cut through all the nonsense. We wanted to see the world around us as reliable and natural. We wanted to be free of all the superstition and myth, and create a world where we could develop economic security- without thinking that strange and weird things were going to popup in the dark and scare us. Because of this need, we understandably began the modern age with an overly materialisticand simplified view of the universe." ...
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