hoghead1

I will try another tack ... here is a quote from Joseph Campbell from the Power of Myth ...

 

 

Absence of evil goes as far back as the neoplatonists, I gather

 

Like I said before six people and half a dozen opinions as to what spiritual is.

 

You must be reading something I did not mean to say in what I wrote.

 

So a destruction of city is not evil?

OK.

That's maybe how Campbell sees it: but in the Christian mystical literature, unity with God did allow for retained personal identity. The "ego" has not been dissolved. Rather, the defenses or barriers have been lowered so that the creature can enjoy a richer direct, immediate flow of God's feelings into itself. In some of the literature on experimental meditation, the object of contemplation does seem to disappear, but I posit that is because one has transcended the subject-object dichotomy, moved from an I-it relationship to an I-thou relationship, is experiencing the empathic bond that always existed between the two, though normally not paramount in consciousness.

Yours ... very simply (my initial reaction) we are trapped by our desires.

 

As to your comment on ego ... quite often we hear comments about other people's egos etc. Sometimes we have a need to control our egos. Who is it that is trying to subdue our own ego? While I readily admit an ego is a model of what we perceive as our thought patterns (chemistry/physics patterns), I would not be without those patterns.

 

The second video ... for me was a recognition of the illusion of dualistic thought. We are connected regardless of how we might perceive of ourselves as separate.

 

Traditional religions concretize that thought, panentheism subtly enables that illusion to persist.

 

I disagree. Panentheism is not dualistic thought. Panentheism eschews all forms of dualistic thinking. God and the universe are understood as one reality, not two separate ones. Mind and matter are understood as one reality, not two separate, independent realms. The subject-object dichotomy is transcended by the principle of relativity or essential relatedness.

I'm a newbie. I have a doctorate in theology. My AOS is process theology. I will be happy to9 share what I know.