lucid

After reading a few posts from "Jesus" in another thread, I'd have to say I was wrong. It's interesting for a couple of minutes, then gets really tired. I have a hunch that a truely realized/enlightened/Christed being wouldn't be so quick to tell you how realized/enlightened/Christed he/she is. (I hope I'm not bruising a non-existent ego). ((((((Why am I such a bastard?))))))

I completely agree with that statement; that is a whopper of an "if" though. Also, I wouldn't knock "Christ consciousness" as merely New Agey mush outright. If I were ever to run into someone who claimed to be operating with Christ consciousness, I would listen very carefully. Not that I'd follow the guy, but I'd have found an interesting scene to witness. And that (sad to say) is a rare thing these days.

To Cynthia, I agree with you that this is not something to get stuck on for any extended period of time. It's just that being new to the forum, I didn't know how anyone here interpreted the Bible. I also agree that there is tremendous value in myth and have great respect for the work of Joseph Campbell as well as Carl Jung. I just think that there has to be a clear move from a literal interpretation to an allegorical interpretation in order for the deeper value of a myth to be appreciated. It's good to see that the forum participants here have already made this move. But I also think that it's important for an understanding of this world to acknowledge the fact that millions are still wandering around in the deep dark woods of thinking that humanity began 5,000 years ago by two people popping out of the dirt. Is that a good thing or a scary thing? To cunninglily, there is certainly a lot of untapped potential available to us. We don't know what future abilities we can realize as we go through accelerated consciousness growth in the coming decades. There is a fine line though between seeing real possibilities and delusions. Sometimes the way to see the line is to cross it, realize it, then go back having learned something. One such example of crossing the line (in my unprofessional opinion) is in the book Putting on the Mind of Christ by Jim Marion. "If we want to create something good in our lives, we must think about it clearly and then put some emotion into it. The higher vibrations will then precipitate like rainfall out of the astral plane into the physical plane and manifest what we want...Jesus was such a master of this ability that he could literally manifest things 'out of thin air'." Now that quote is "repugnant to both reason and common sense" and I can see that there is something to it, but the presentation is so offensive ("literally manifest") that Mr. Marion's credibility is blown as far as I'm concerned (and why oh why did Ken Wilber write the forward?!). But maybe I'm being too critical; it's supposed to be about the Love isn't it? And yes I will have fun in my time machine .

Thank you for the welcome. But... I do not agree that it does not matter whether or not they occured. It bothers me that a significant portion of the population believes that natural laws can be preempted to give them favor. That strikes me as a dangerous way of thinking and being. I'm not saying that life should be a quest to accurately know every single little fact throughout history all over the world. I am claiming that deliberately shielding anything from the light of reason will hamper spiritual growth. Just to be clear and careful, I am not saying that the light of reason is the brightest light; only that a person hiding from the light of reason is nowhere near ready for the light of God. I also think that the only way for a person to believe any of the miracles of the Bible is to refuse to be reasonable, to refuse to grow up. Also, these specific irrational beliefs are not the only way to be unreasonable. Please do not infer that I think that not believing them automatically makes a person reasonable. Cunninglily, I see what you're saying about soul events and physical events being on a continuum. An illumination of the soul of John Doe will be accompanied by a change in the physical matter that he is made of. His speech will be different, so his voice will vibrate the air differently. His facial expressions will be different. People will see and hear him differently, they might react to him differently. Grudges may disappear "miraculously"; relationship wounds may be "healed." OTOH, grudges may emerge out of nowhere; relationships could be rendered null. As all this occurs all the atoms and molecules dance along accordingly. What you don't see are people coming back from the dead, you don't see gravity defied. The natural laws of physics and biology are not violated, but something very profound, sacred, and creative occurs that works within the bounds rather than crassly (and futilely) trying to break them. Cynthia, I understand that things are different today from how they were thousands of years ago. I don't have a problem with the authors of the Bible or the Bible itself. The Bible isn't going anywhere, nor would I wish it to. My problem is only with Christians today who in spite of all that we've learned in the past 2,000 years, still insist that everything happened just like the Bible says. Today we have methods of proof not available to Biblical times, so the nice (I would say lazy) thing to say is, "Well, we just can't know." Oh come on. Let's go on a little imagination ride. Suppose 300 years from now Professor Frink invents a device that can accurately reconstruct a visual image of the past as far back as we like. A great assembly is called for the unveiling of the device. The first demonstration will be to verify or debunk the parting of the Red Sea. On one side of the assembly are the believers in the parting (yes, they'll still be around in 300 years) and on the other side are the hellbound skeptics. Now to the central question of this story: just before the experiment is carried out, which side is going to be more nervous? Well I hope that made some sense and wasn't too heavy handed. Jay

Hi. I just found this forum today, and it looks very nice from what I've read so far. One thing I was looking for but didn't see was how a progressive Christian would interpret the Biblical accounts of miracles. I come from a fundamentalist Christian background (Assemblies of God to be precise), so I was taught that all the events described in the Bible happened exactly as they are described. Do you think the Red Sea actually parted? that five loaves and two fishes fed 5,000? that Jesus rose from the dead? Are these real physical events? Are they metaphors for events that occur in the soul? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.