flowperson

I knew that if anyone beat me to this birthday wish today after thinking about posting it all day at work, it would be you MOW. Thank you. And Amadeus, G-d loves you for all of the unparalleled joy that you have brought to us mere humans over the past 250 years, and I do not give a darn what mean old Italian aristocrats may have said about you back in the day. flow....

MOW As I have travelled through life, much of it in Illinois, I was always intrigued by the reality that some people were white on the outside and seemed black on the inside, while others were obviously black on the outside and definitely white on the inside. We called it the "oreo cookie effect"; and, now it's interesting that this same metaphor is being used by some to describe quantum gravitational effects. Some cosmos we live in. No wonder we're all so dazed and confused. flow....

DD I'm sorry if I gave you the impression that your work is not worthwhile. On the contrary. I've given alot of hours to volunteer efforts over the years to help those who need help, including elderly neighbors who were homebound and couldn't get to the market. The problem is that there is such a large gap these days between those who have and those who have not, and the gap is getting greater each day the past few years with lots of help from politicians who say one thing and do the other, seemingly just to create more suffering by those who can least tolerate more of it. Real changes are needed and sooner than later. It is not a time for conservatism. That being said, I guess that it would be difficult for someone who has not had a profound mystical experience to understand what I attempted to describe as spiritual. In my case it produced written materials that I simply composed and passed along to those who could make some difference by using them. Now, I believe that I saw positive changes take place because of that experience, and that was my only goal in entering into the process. If I didn't feel that my experiences and resulting work was a worthwhile effort in the deepest part of my heart, I wouldn't have participated in the process as scary as it was, and as detrimental to my life it all was in the long run. The strangest part of it all was that I really didn't have a choice. In my judgement at that time it was simply the right thing to do. But then there is no real progress without suffering and sacrifice. These are the primary tenets of Christianity and Buddhism, so it must be true. I just guess that I'm really pissed about how out of balance our lives are becoming in this country, the current wellspring of democracy and unjust punishments. flow ....

Would it surprise you to learn that geeks make tomorrow happen ? STNG attracted a geek audience along with those of us that continually hope and pray for a better future. The two belong together, naturally. flow....

DD Everyone has differing ways of experiencing G-d. I was trying to define spiritualism and spiritual feelings at the request of October's Autumn, not define religious experience and good works as you seem to have done. Both are relevant, and both are true, but both are seen from differing experience perspectives. I respect your perspective, and I believe that reciprocal action on your part would be to not try to deny me mine, or to try to talk me out of believing things that I have experienced. flow....

I would go with Fred's oft cited take on spiritual matters here. Having been there from time to time, I would define it as having an emotion-driven "feeling" that the moments that one is experiencing and that often engenders some sort of action that is intended to benefit others, is an experience that "feels" as though one is part of a limitless wholeness that includes everyone and everything that is/was/and will be real. A positive and eternal ground or field of being, as it were. It is not a part of maya or illusion. It is not false or untrue because your heart tells you that it is "real". The "feeling" of it assures you with certainty that what is being experienced and what that all may lead to are part of G-d's greater plan for intelligence in the cosmos. It is a "feeling" and state of being that can best be described as positive connectedness. I believe that all religion stems from such experiences, individual and collective. flow....

Dean Stockwell. Another great series. While we're on favorites, how about the two parter where he first enters himself as a high school student, and then a comrade of his brother's in Vietnam? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Thanks for the Dean Stockwell comeback. I was having one of those two by four moments that occur occasionally with people my age. He was really great in that role. I believe my favorite episode was the one in the last season that addressed the JFK assasination and the mindset of Lee Oswald. Interestingly, the series was cancelled not too long after that if I'm not mistaken. Art too close to truth do you think ? Oh, and it might be close to the time that we all need to bone up on warp field geometry. Does it involve Hilbert Space theories or Reimann Geometry? flow....

We seem to have a collective identification with STngen. Does anyone wonder why this is so ? Was it just good writing? Was it part of the "collective" dream of our generation ? Or was it just that the characters and depictions were so well done after the third year ? I am old enough to remember the original running of ST episodes, but I'm kind of like all of you. When Stngen got into gear I readily identified with the episodes, while I never did seem to enjoy many of the ST original episodes as much. Another series that I really loved was Quantum Leap. I really seemed to identify with that show, and went into mourning when it disappeared. It was really fascinating, and I am seriously contemplating buying the entire DVD series. Scott Bakula never did another thing to measure up to it, and I thought that the guy that played Al was superb. If I could only think of his name. He's gone now I think. I know that he had been acting in film since he was a child and his first role was a fascinating film made in 1947, I believe, called, The Boy With Green Hair. It was an excellent piece on what it means to be young and different from your peer group. Anyone know ? flow....

I second that. flow....

I agree that there are perception problems in using the words "Christianity" and Christian". The reason for this is the excessive public relations outreach by the right wing members of our faith, as if they/we were really about selling some sort of product to the rest of the world, instead of doing things to help their fellow humans. That's not what most of us are about. Read your way through some of the discussions here over the past year or so. I believe you'll discover that many of us here have been victimized in some ways by these very same people. I personally cringe whenever I hear our religion named in the media. That only means that more people in the world will misunderstand what most of us are about over the long run. Belief is not about images created in the media for public consumption and judgement. Belief is about living one's life while always being mindful of our fellow humans' needs. flow....

I wholeheartedly agree with all of the above. By all means, social justice issues are the core of Christian ethics, and this is defined by what is discussed in the Pope's new encyclical, Agape, or brotherly and sisterly love. The willingness to sacrifice some of our lives to help those in need. As I mentioned on another thread after Katrina, we have been placed in the position of showing our concern for others by only writing checks and being satisfied with just that. For those who have the time and the motivation, there are many other and more important ways. flow....

My reading of the Old Testament leads me to conclude that the emergence of the "peaceful approaches to life" began in Old Testament times, primarily with the writings of the prophets. The historian Will Durant provides a reasonable argument for this hypothesis as does the psychologist Julian Jaynes (to mention only a few outside of the usual theological/historical debates). minsocal <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I agree that the prophets prepared the people for the eventual coming of the third persons. But the coming of them did not begin until Jesus arrived and began to form communities of the new beliefs, which then did not begin to really start to transform human societies until about the 4th century ad. I believe we're on the same page if we look at this as a timeline. flow....

Thanks for the learned tutorial Meek Shall. As I said earlier on another thread, if Josef Goebbels could come back to see how effectively these people are utilizing negative propaganda with the able assistance of some corporate partners, he'd be doing continuous back flips. flow....

Kind of like Groundhog Day in a wormhole, EH ? flow....

As I've said many times here, I don't like tests because they involve the artificial labelling of complex things. Besides, many of the questions in this one seemed more or less irrelevant to me. All that said, it looks like I'm a more or less middle of the road heretic, in at least the classic sense. flow.... You scored as Pelagianism. You are a Pelagian. You reject ideas about man's fallen human nature and believe that as a result we are able to fully obey God. You are the first Briton to contribute significantly to Christian thought, but you're still excommunicated in 417. Pelagianism 67% Gnosticism 50% Apollanarian 50% Monophysitism 50% Chalcedon compliant 50% Adoptionist 42% Nestorianism 33% Socinianism 33% Arianism 33% Docetism 33% Monarchianism 25% Donatism 25% Modalism 25% Albigensianism 17%

Is this the Inn owned and operated by Jeff Foxworthy ? flow....

Or is it both? Is it, like Jung said, the rhizome and the flower? Yes, it's both; just like a pebble on the beach is Spirit. But are we talking about Spirit itself, or the pebble on the beach that is Spirit? Conceptually they're still two different things, even if ultimately they're not. Sorry, I'm in a paradoxical mood this week, so I can only imagine how unnerving it is to have a dialogue with me. If it's any consolation, the outline of my new book is coming along nicely, thanks in large part to these feats of mental gymnastics. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Fred, you have my heartfelt condolences. These days I think of consciousness as being a "virtual presence" in any number of possible "virtual realities" I'm still working on a holographic paradigm for our existence you see. Actually I'm excited for you. Work hard, suffer much, enlighten us all. flow....

Wouldn't that be the answer to "Does a cow have a Buddha nature"? Or does that properly belong in the jokes section? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I thought for dogs the answer was "woof", and for Klingon canines, "Worf". But then if you are into running a loom and making your own designer fabrics, it would be " warp and woof ". Very confusing this spiritual stuff !! Imagine how it all seems to pets. My fish just swim up to the glass and wiggle for more food. Very basic stuff. They want and need, we provide. Does that make us Gods to them ? flow....

I'm with you on this one Darby. Having served as executive staff at a large research university, I know what it takes to succeed as she did, and more importantly to survive. I like to comment that universities is where back-stabbing was invented in the tenth century. You can be stabbed so expertly at these places you don't realize that it was fatal until three years later. flow....

I too have a problem with the Old/New Testament thing. It seems as though, as you pointed out, that the two Testaments are describing, as you intimated, three differing kinds of human beings. Two of them being older in origin, but which have thrived and grown for millenia in a law-driven, reward-punishment scenario that one could really call evolutional thematically in which the toughest guy/tribe/community wins and brands the future in its own way. Your comment on the central attention to the Jewish tribe is appropriate since they were chosen to lead us into realities defined by what knowledge we gained from books, as opposed to how well we learned to slay each other with ass jawbones. It's interesting to note also that this is how Kubrick chose to define the early time of proto humans in 2001, A Space Odyssey. Now , as you mentioned, the New Testament seems to define the emergence of a third kind of human defined by peaceful approaches to life and a primary emphasis upon the individual dignity of humans and communities of like-minded souls, Jesus being the first of this third type, at least that's the way I see things. As far as your statement about the book of Mormon, having read parts of it, it does in a way metaphorically describe some aspects of the great native civilizations that inhabited the Americas for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived. Then there are tantalizing clues of others who may have come here from time to time in minor ways such as the Chinese, Norsemen, Phonecians, Irish, and Hebrews. There actually are extant flat rocks found in Tennesse with Hebrew inscriptions on them in an ancient version of the script. I don't know. It's a mystery as I said earlier. If only the LDS didn't always illustrate the characters in their stories as tall, skinny, white guys, this all might become a more viable possibility. flow....

Well I guess that it was inevitable that this would happen now that the release of the movie based upon Dan Brown's book is only a few months away. In today's media-driven world, there are always those who seem to want to control the future by restricting what we all have the right to consume and think about. In this case the target is impressionable children. Of course we heard nothing like this when Mr. Gibson's film was released. I didn't see it, but I understand that it was quite violent. Is there "good" violence and "bad" violence ? It would make more sense to me for Opus Dei to openly campaign against gun possession and violent video game use by children in the inner cities; but, I guess that wouldn't fit with the agendas of those who seem to value violence and death over curiosity and inquiry when it comes to religion and morals. The interviewee seems to indicate that children are protected from explicit sex and violence, but in my opinion there's more of both around all the time these days for children to access. I would take specific issue with several of the points made by the spokesman for Opus Dei, especially with regard to the changing image distribution strategies nullifying a large degree of parental control over what children can watch these days when a film is released. But then what's the point ? The point is always about how conservative institutions can find ways to control those that they perceive need to be controlled. This strategy always ends up badly as history has taught us. Rome - Controversial Catholic group Opus Dei has called for the forthcoming film version of The Da Vinci Code to be given an adult rating to prevent children being influenced by its "insidious" lies about the Catholic Church. "Just as we protect children from explicit sex and violence, it would seem to make sense to protect them from violence that is more subtle and thus more insidious," said Marc Carroggio, a spokesperson for the body in Rome. "Any adult with a minimum of education can distinguish reality from fiction. But when history is manipulated, you cannot expect a child to make proper judgements," he added. "Merely adding a disclaimer that says 'fiction' is not enough." Making the best of the situation Carroggio told the Catholic news agency Zenit in an interview he did not believe the film, which will be released in May, would impact negatively on the organisation, but would be "a sort of indirect publicity for us". "An effort is being made to take advantage of the great interest aroused ... in Jesus Christ," the agency quotes him as saying. "Although the story is absurd and at times somewhat humourous, it produces a hateful image of the institution and it is well known that hateful images like this produce feelings of hatred in those who lack a critical sense," Carroggio said. But he said Opus Dei would make no "declaration of war" against the film as it would only help its marketing. "No one is going to make threats or organise boycotts, or anything like that," he said. Opus Dei members would react like other Christians to the film and would "use the lemon to make lemonade". Opus Dei, which has a chiefly lay membership estimated at more than 80 000 worldwide, has aroused controversy because of charges that it is secretive and socially ultra-conservative. flow

OMMMMMM, Mani, Padmi, OMMMMMMM ! flow....

(The hot dog vendor prepares the hot dog and gives it to the monk. The monk pays him and asks for the change. The hot dog vendor says: "Change comes from within".) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The monk eats the hot dog and suddenly everything starts to spin. flow....

Anyone see 60 Minutes yesterday ? What do you think about Kinky Friedman running for Governor of Texas? Has Ms. Ivens written about this ? Sounds like a third party effort to me. He had equally bad things to say about Republicans and Democrats. If I lived there he'd get my vote. I love the name of his band, The Texas Jewboys ! flow....

Welcome !! I believe that most of us here follow the dualistic precepts that you disclosed, but also acknowledge an underlying unity to it all that is still mostly mystery. However, most of us shy away from political discussion because, well, politics sucks ! But that's not everyone's belief. Looking forward to interesting discussions... flow....