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gfcacha

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  1. In my reflections on Eastern and Western spiritual traditions, I always tend to converge the teachings by finding the commonality and bridging the difference. In this question, the first thing we need to do is to clarify the concept of the self. In many esoteric traditions, there are two selves: the Higher Self (which is also the Divine Self or Spirit in us) and the Lower Self (normally termed as ego). Apophatic spiritual traditions will always drive toward transcending the ego to be one with the Divine Spirit in us (the Atman or Dharmakaya) because the ego is just an illusion and impermanent, it is the higher soul (or Dharma body) that is eternal and permanent. Cataphatic spiritual traditions (such as Tantra and Ignatian spirituality) makes use of the ego to find God's presence in the present corporal reality. Following the Tantra and Kabbalah traditions, I am inclined to see that the ego is an essential part of our human nature being a being within time and space. It is through our ego (our beliefs, thoughts, emotions) that we create our reality in space and time. The important thing is to purify the ego of negative programming from other people when we are growing up and to let the Higher Soul or Spirit manifest itself through the ego. The self is an essential part of being human but we need to let the self express our true nature and essence as being created in the image of God. God loves us unconditionally so we have to learn to love our self. This is the reason why selfishness is something natural to being human. Kabbalah teaches that being creatures means that ingrained in us is the will to receive. God, the creator with the will to bestow, created us with the will to receive so we can receive pleasure from our creator. As I see it, selfishness is not the problem. The problem is how we define the self. We normally define the self to be our body or our possessions. So we love ourselves and our possessions only to the exclusion of others. For parents with children, they sense and feel that their children is part of their selves. They naturally feel what their children feel because there is a sense of oneness among them. The parents identify with their children and feel their pain and joy. This reminds me of this saying of Jesus: Whatever you do to the least of my brothers, you do it unto me. I think that with Jesus' identifying with the least of the people, he becomes one with them in mind and heart. He feels what they feel and desire what they desire. To add to this, I have read of Hebrew saying that the true wording of the second commandment is this: Love your neighbor as your self. This wording emphasized that the neighbor is part of our self. When we see the neighbor as part of our self, then we feel what they feel and desire what they desire. To summarize, the challenge for us is not to be selfless because it is going against our nature as a creation of God. Love of self and selfishness is natural and part of God's design. The challenge is really self-expansion. We need to begin to expand how we define our self - from our body and possessions to our kin, then expanded to include community and society, then expanded to include the whole world. The truth is that this is the ontological reality: the individual is part of the whole and the whole is part of the individual. What the individual does affect the whole but what happens to the whole also affects the individual. In Kabbalah, the concept of Adam ha Rishon states that our individual soul is just a piece broken from the original soul of Adam. When our consciousness have evolved from ego consciousness to collective consciousness (then to cosmic consciousness), we will begin to see that humanity and the earth is our self. With this expanded self, being selfish will mean taking care of others, humanity and the earth because when we take care of them, we are just taking care of ourselves.
  2. I understand where you are coming from and agree that currently, this kind of way of life has become a minority. But if you go back to pre-agrarian and pre-industrial societies, I would think that this is largely the norm when the tribe is the focal community in which people live. Generally, in tribal cultures, especially the hunting stage, there would be almost no concept of private property as people partake of the bounty of nature. I would also presume that communal living (and probably communal possession) is much more ingrained. I would be curious on reading researches on how humanity is wired to live: are we wired to live in community? or are we wired to live as individuals? Humanity has to find a balance between individualism and communitarianism. But I observed that we are veering more on extreme individualism even in the spirituality. This has created a culture of egoism and selfishness that is slowly destroying the common good. My theory is that we might be individual in terms of physical body but we share in one field in the soul or spiritual dimension of life. In Kabbalah, there is one concept called Adam ha Rishon. This concept states that the one soul of Adam breaks into pieces to become our individual souls. The correction of the world involves integrating these pieces back together as our one oversoul. We always think that we are complete by ourselves. But I think that we are just part of a larger organism (I call earth humanity) like our organs are part of our body. From the eyes of God, salvation or Divinization is not by individual person but by the larger organism (or earth humanity). The individual is part of the whole; and the whole is part of the individual. God will "save" us not as individuals but as one humanity. I might even think that this is an all or nothing thing since we are just one soul, the Adam ha Rishon. This is the reason I think that God commanded as to love one another and be each other's keeper, because we will be saved as one humanity. The level of our evolution or Divinization will depend on the spiritual level of the lowest evolved individual consciousness. This is the reason why we need to help and support the evolution of the bottom people so together we can be "saved" or Divinized together. Remember the prayer of Jesus in John that humanity may be one as God and He is one. As I see it, there is only One Life, and we are part of this One Life, and we will grow and evolved together as One Life in realizing God's Kingdom on earth. And part of realizing this is to be one mind and heart in communal living with common possession with God of the bounty of nature. This is probably the essence why the key orthopraxis of Jesus is the formation of the messianic community through the apostles and the early Christian communities.
  3. We have never lost the practical application of communal living and common possession. The monastic communities (both Catholic and Orthodox) and the Catholic religious orders and covenanted lay communities (Opus Dei and Focolare) are able to continue with the early Christian community practice of communal living and common possession. I am thinking of the Amish communities and Taize community as well for the Protestant Tradition. These models can be starting point for re-visioning and experimenting in new forms of living in communion that are applicable not just for consecrated religious but also for lay people. In fact, there has been an attempt to form a lay contemplative community in France (Le Pan De Vie but this was disbanded due to certain controversies). From a paradigm of flight from the world, contemplative community living needs to shift to a paradigm of alternative living in the world. Just imagine a contemplative community in which the members (both celibate and married) can work together in a community owned business and realize their full potential in the talent or discipline that they want to excel in the service of the community and the world.
  4. Six sense or higher senses or clairvoyance is spiritual sense that is naturally part of being human. The higher senses allow us to perceive the spiritual world and be guided by it. One of my insight is that Christians are supposed to nurture the higher senses because this is the way that we can clearly perceive the guidance and leading of the Holy Spirit. If our higher senses are open, we will be able to discern the voice and guidance of God's Spirit in our heart much clearer. We have the capability to be mediums and psychics if we develop our higher senses.
  5. This is one insight that I just realized now as I write this. Jesus never wrote anything but he formed a community and gave us his spirit to ensure the continuity of his teachings. The early Christian community incarnated the full essence of Jesus' teachings and spirit and provided the alternative social, economic and political order that will realize the fullness of God's Kingdom on earth. The communal living and common possession of the early Christian community is a key orthopraxis of putting Jesus' teachings and spirit into life. Going back to this practice is critical in addressing the heightening social and economic injustice in the world. With the looming automation of much of the work in the world, humanity will face a situation in which there will be fewer jobs that will be available. We need to start forming faith communities that will also act as social, economic and political units to address this challenge. One of my insight in the rapid growth of the early Christian communities is that they provided an alternative social, economic and political system and structure that addressed the problems of poverty in the Roman Empire by creating communities of justice and peace in which the members of the community exercised common possession and sharing of resources. This is a practical solution to social and economic injustice, which addressed the issue of poverty in the early Christian communities. From a business framework, the early Christian communities provided the pilot and template for a just and peaceful social, economic and political order that could have been expanded world wide had the elites not hijacked the religion during the time of Constantine onward when Christianity has been established as the religion of the Roman Empire. I would like to read and hear your thoughts on this.
  6. In hermetic philosophy as well as in science, the nature of the universe is evolution. Life evolves from simple to complex. From this matrix, the Kingdom of God is social, economic, political and ecological order that is fully aligned to God's Will and Plan for creation. It is a state of being in the world that fully express the divine essence of and in all things. This reminds of the Eastern Orthodox concept of Theosis or Deification. The Kingdom of God is a Divinized creation that will burst forth as we evolve. From esoteric teachings, when humanity's energy and consciousness vibration has increased significantly, immortality might even be possible in this life of earth. Remembering the movie "Babylon 5", humanity might evolved into beings with purely energy bodies. This might be what the Transfiguration and the Resurrection show to us as the end of humanity.
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