flowperson

I dont' remember where the most memorable quote on this phenomenon came from, maybe the movie Dumb and Dumber..."stupid is as stupid does". Someone out there will remember it if I'm wrong though. On second thought we should make that The Right Wing Network Conservative Protestant Jihad. Lots of words, but more accurate. TRWNCPJ!

It is interesting to note that Morton Smith, author of the previously mentioned book-Jesus The Magician, posits in his research that only about one third of the original book of Mark ended up in the canonical gospels, and that the missing part(s) probably contained some secrets just too explosive to share with any but Jesus' closest confidants. This would square with some of the asides in the gnostic gospels pertaining to Jesus' sharing of certain "secrets" with but a few of his followers. Smith also states that the only copy(s) of the missing two thirds of Mark's writings probably went up in smoke when the library at Alexandria Egypt burned. Smith traces Mark's movements from Rome to Alexandria after Peter's upsidedown crucifiction in the colisseum. Mark was reputedly Peter's secretary during the time that he was the first prelate of the church in Rome.

Yes, I agree that John is probably more satisfying and familiar in the traditional sense. And likewise it probably also was way back when in the day that it was canonized into the four. Since scholars largely agree that John came from the Jewish-mystical side of things, it would have been a more acceptable mythical narrative explaining the transitions of belief that were taking place back then. Until Thomas was discovered, beginning with the uncovering of fragments in the 19th century, we ( as Pagels points out in Adam,Eve, and the Serpent) could only surmise what might be the content of writings labeled as gnostic by the virulent attacks upon such literature and their authors by the early orthodox church leaders, such as Irenaeus the bishop of Lyon. The intent of these attacks was, of course, to root out heresies that might "confuse" people, and lead them to question the orthodox reasoning and traditional hiearchy of the early church. Blue sky thinking, when it came to whatever the "true" nature of the man Jesus might have been should never be pursued or allowed, and the taboo continues to this day in the conservative christian world. But today, and beginning with the pursuit of serious biblical scholarship, we have new avenues to pursue and research in the twentieth century, not to mention the appearance on the map of the Dead Sea Scrolls, The Nag Hammadi Library, and the late Morton Smith's book, Jesus the Magician. The existing " narrative myths" that we have at hand concerning Jesus and his works are excellent ones. And myths are the deepest ""truths" that may be composed about the "sacred" beginnings of things in cultural history. When Jesus appeared it was a sacred event in the history of a profane world. The late Mircea Eliade, the preeminent historian of religion wrote that "the sacred always manifests itself as a reality of a wholly different order from natural realities." Once the sacred descends into the profane world, it is changed into whatever observers think and believe that they witnessed; and, then their imagination and artistic abilities must flesh-out new stories. Hence the doctrinal conflicts that continue to this day. We participate in a "progressive " forum on the nature of Christ and Christianity so that MORE truth might be uncovered in the passage of time. At least that's the way I see things. But then I've been exposed to things in the world of science and technology that make me question more and more the realities of the things that I observe each day. I do not believe in many "coincidences" any more. I'm genetically tuned to an analog and linear world. Non-linear events that "coincidentally" happen and change the course of events in mostly negative ways are wrong if they are causative in their nature. In my way of pursuing the "truth" of all this I am more inclined to accept the fictions of Salman Rushdie, Dan Brown, and Martin Scorsese as better starting points in my pursuit of sacred truths than those produced by Mel Gibson and his ilk. However, I thought he was really great in Mad Max and Beyond Thunderdome.

Thank you Aletheia for posting the wonderful letter. One of the benefits of communicating with really smart people is that they come up with individually original concepts, something that today's world discourages through its institutions, unless a team efort is involved. One of the truly unique things that has always awed me about Jesus' visit with us is that his concepts and ideas were totally original, and as we uncover the roots of early documents such as Thomas, we can only begin to grasp the length and breadth of what he was aiming at for us all. I find it interesting that Pagels and her colleagues overturned basic assumptions about the early writings, and perhaps uncovered the true reason for the demonizing of the Gnostic sects so early on in Christian history. The concepts of a limitless realm of God and an ability to access that realm simply through individual modes of meditation and thought must have been very threatening to empires that existed soley to control and plunder. Instead of offering blood and monetary sacrifices to the gods in order to placate them and their vengeful ways, all one had to do was to think ,gesture, and pray, alone or together with fellow believers in order to access the limitless realm of the God of the Universe. WOW!

Yes Lily I think you see the concept of unity that I was referring to. The ultimate unity is that of the quantum field, of which everything in our universe is composed. Or, a reality concept in which everything is connected. All through the gnostic writings we are presented with the concept and challenge of unity, whereas the purpose of the dark one is to separate the unity that was originally created into manageable bits so that material exploitation might take place. The trick of continuing our existence is to keep a reasonable balance between the unification process and the necessary exploitations. Of course we couild not continuie to exist without exploitation of our environments. This parable refers to a system of thought that might render material barriers more transparent in order to facilitate our transcendence of them. Again, the sword , wall, hand, and powerful man references, at least in my opinion, are used here to explain these ultimate relationships between humans and their environments in somewhat understandable and familiar terms. There are always walls around us. There are always swords available to project our powers, if we so choose. Our hands always proceed us when we feel our way into strange places. Powerful men are always around us to stop, or at least slow down, such explorations that might upset delicate balances. As a suggestion I would recommend any physics text that might provide you with explanations of quantum complimentarity, or local-non-local effects. Such information may help you get your arms around the concept of the unity I'm referring to. I connote the term "the Kingdom" as a surrogate for the quantum unity I've been speaking of.

My intuition tells me that this saying and several others in Thomas relate human emotion and the material effects of our presence within surrounding quantum realities. They may lead us to beginnings of understanding as to how human immersion in the quantum realities of our environments, and of which we are composed, can change realities through our powers of observation. If we are slowly evolving into more "Christlike" beings, which I believe is the whole point of the New Testament, then this would be one interpretation that fits with the cultural turmoil that we are all experiencing these days. Mysticism blurs the boundaries around us into bridges to new beginnings. Jesus was a rebel and a mystic. We are led to use the messages imparted by the "signs and wonders" in these materials to navigate our ways into new futures .This is why these materials have been so threatening to established orthodoxy throughout history. I believe that you are correct in assuming that saying 98 is a parable demonstrating the use of one's "will" in overcoming opposition, even when it is outside the walls that immediately surround us. The use of the sword imaqe is a figurative tool used in this literature to be representative of the force of will that eventually accomplishes the desired effects. If only asserting one's will to accomplish desired results outside of one's self could be considered to be violence in this new set of realities that we are entering, then our gradual and collective loss of privacy and erosion of access to higher education for the "working " classes might be considered to be but a portion of orthodoxy's reactions to the onset of this phenomenon.

It is my belief that more research into the body of wisdom literature from which this saying is extracted may be needed before discussion of these things among us might proceed in a meaningful way. My suggestions in this regard would be: www.webcom.com/~gnosis/thomasbook/intro.html This is a website that begins a book by a Yale Professor, Herbert Christian Merillat. The chapters are short, the language is layperson-friendly, and lets you know just about all you can find out about the apostle and brother of Jesus, Judas Thomas, or Thomas Didymus (twin-twin) in the greek. The Secret Teachings of Jesus.....Four Gnostic Gospels, Translated by Marvin W. Meyer Random Houise, New York, 1984 The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels, Vintage Books-Random House, New York, 1979 These materials will lead you to the mystic Jesus, and some meanings of his presence here among us so long ago that were buried by church authorities. Enjoy the journey, even though it is all technically heresy.

It appears that we have explored the meaning of the eight points at some length and agree that they are, of necessity, a basic set of political statements that define the "mission" of this "thing" that we are all interested in. On the oft chance that we all agree that language is a process of symbolic interpretation and understanding, how about some of us taking a stab at interpreting the eight symbols that appear on the web page, and to me, directly relate to the spiritual foundations of this "thing" that has attracted us all to it. I for one don't believe that it is a coincidence that there are eight symbols, and eight points. In today's world we are increasingly led to search for and to understand the meanings of such "coincidences". I'm fairly sure that Jung, at least, would urge us to pursue this. Most of the symbols are ancient iconography and carry somewhat different meanings to the viewer depending upon the context in which they are viewed. For example, the spiral symbol is generally thought to be symbolic of the constant turning of, sun, light, the primal life force. But, in some circumstances it can also connote death It appears in many of the primitive pictographs and rock art in the world's desert regions. And yet it also appears on a rock in the middle of an 8,000 year old burial chamber in Newgrange Ireland,an early agricultural settlement in the British Isles. The rock is placed such that it is only illuminated by the rising sun on the winter solstice, Any budding Robert Langdons out there?

My father was baptized Roman Catholic, but was never serious about going to mass, etc. His favorite phrase about it all was that one didn't have to go to church to be a good Christian. And, he's proven it to me. Mom was raised in a fairly liberal Congregational Church near Chicago in a factory town. She had a large family and many of them and their children belonged so it was the natural thing for me to do when I was young. I belonged to UCC churches most of my life until about 2000. Since I've moved to the southwest I haven"t affiliated with anything yet except TCPC. I'm just not comfortable with orthodox theology any more, even when it comes to me from a UCC pulpit. It just seems all too hierarchical and rote for me in light of the rapid pace of changes in world culture these days, even though I realize the importance of anchoring one's religious philosophies. I still always read the King James edition and ALWAYS use my Strong's concordance when I question the use of certain words and phrases. Tracing them back to their Hebrew and Greek roots usually gives me a clearer picture of the writers' intents. I think this question is important for us all. Let's do it again. Were you raised a Christian or did you convert from another religion ?

"Taking the time to feed your brain alpha energy is a hard thing to get used to if you’re a type A person who’s always thinking, planning, and on the go. But your body knows its limits." Too much planning automatically puts us in a box over time, and when we sense we are in a box, the natural parts of us (our organic bodies) always try to find methods of escape. In the absence of any possible long-term escape, our organic self begins internal warfare. Our immune systems rebel and deteriorate. We feel pain. Remember that our most ancient heritage is nomadic within nature. Society can take the person out of nature, but it cannot take nature out of the person. Or, as I sometimes relate my favorite proverb to some of my customers," People plan, God laughs."

I think it's more a reflection of the fact that it originated in chat rooms, where discussions (if you can call most of them that) fly by so fast, that you practically have to speak in acronyms to stay afloat. Now with mobile text messaging, you have to fit your half of the conversation into a cell phone LCD window. Socrates and Plato would be aghast! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ah yes, old Sock and Plate would be aghast. But, as most humans have communicated over the past 60,000 years or so ( that's when most people who study such stuff agree spoken communication likely began in S. Africa) the pace of speech and transfers of meaning have not changed appreciably ( except for some chipmunks I've heard around Chriatmas time). But with the advent of business and law driven interactions, the need to cram more and more information into smaller and smaller packages of communication to be recorded and sent between individuals and institutions, has caused the information explosion and revolution that we are all now a part of, whether we wish to be or not. The need for shorthand secretaries and court stenographers were but two of the natural outcomes of this dynamic I fully agree with your version as to the need for such acronyms in chat room interactions. The bigger picture, which is often obscure to us, also suggests that the early infrastructure of the internet (ARPANET) set the stage for these adjustments to eventually be made in electronic information transfers among us. Thanks for your thoughtful response. How's your sleep deficit coming?

C'mon, give yourself a couple minutes, you can figure it out. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The widespread usage of initials and acronyms in our netspeak culture probably is a reflection of the origins of the forerunner of the internet, ARPANET. This was research performed in the late 60's and early 70's at several major US reseach universities, and by a few defense contractors in the Eastern US, to design a national hardware and software infrastructure so that critical computing centers could talk with each other through their machines. This was all funded out of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). See how things get rolling with our money? Or what you might say is, WYDSIWYG.

Second Bite: Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, when knowledge acquisition is primary Any John D. Macdonald novel when entertainment is the priority. Question: Do you think that movies are better then ever? Or, do you think that they have become less entertainment and more illusory gimmickry since digital production and special effects were introduced in the late 70's and early 80's?

Congratulations! Suit him up. The Fighting Illini really need him.

I have studied this issue at some length and was fascinated as to why women, ie. goddesses, have been treated on such an exclusionary basis by so many cultures and belief systems for so long, including major branches of Christianity. Maybe it's because of a fundamental jealousy within our species since, in my opinion, women are carriers of life and men are carriers of death. The demonizations at Salem might be but one historical episode in this ritualized scapegoating process throughout history. On this journey I have been drawn time and again to the varied writings of Elaine Pagels, and to a 1989 book by the late anthropologist Marija Gimbutas , The Languase of the Goddess. At first glance this might impress one as just another coffee table book. It does have a lot of pictures and illustrations. But it also has a forward by one of my heros, Joseph Campbell ( he knew a little about anthropology) and endless trails of maps and other reference points to lead you wherever you might wish to go. I highly recommend it as a primary source in studying the subject. Remember that research has shown that for about 94% of the time that there have been modern human beings, matriarchy has prevalied over patriarchy in many societies. Then about 6000 years ago that all seemed to change with the rise of the early city state cultures... WHY????????? Flowperson.....

<{POST_SNAPBACK}> If you haven't tried a regimen of vitamins, minerals and herbs I would suggest that approach. There is a lot of information available on the web. I would suggest iherb.com as a good starting point (a yahoo store). My personal experience over the past 20 years would suggest a combination of St.John's wort and Kava Kava capsules as a long term regimen. But since this goes against the theories of western medicine (short term problem-short term quick fix, which is analogous with, fast food-fast death), you'll probably run into flak from your doctor(s). All I can say is that it is difficult to be progressive and optimistic when you feel like crap. 20 years of doing my thing with this method has improved my outlook tremendously and how well I feel on a day to day basis ......... flowperson.....S Nevada