Exploring enlightenment as I have been doing off and on since 2001, and continuously since 2005, sometimes makes me feel guilty. I think this is because of my background with Christianity from my youth. While I mostly didn't go to church voluntarily, I still have these moments where I think that by not accepting Jesus as my savior I'll be going to Hell. Is my toying with alternative spirituality a sin? Is the God-consciousness that I've been working towards the forbidden fruit that got Adam and Eve thrown out of the Garden of Eden? When I'm laying on my death bed, should I have a preacher standing over me, asking if I accept Jesus Christ into my heart? Part of me says I should do so "just in case". But then, if I was on a just-in-case basis, I'd wear symbols from every religion around my neck, wouldn't I!
No doubt that this thinking was caused by the brainwash I'd endured as a child. I'm still worried, though. What's right and what's wrong? I think too much in black and white!
18 comments:
Sophia,
I've talked about these things too much. What you need is some crazy wisdom.
Do crazy people go to hell? Or is insanity a good excuse?
By the way, I finally found my guru. His name is Guru Joe. He's out there playing games. If you ever find him you could ask him these questions.
Also, try to stop him from accessing the internet if you are offline.
If you don't like installing some software try uniextract15_noinst. You will be able to get to Guru Joe without installing him. Your firewall should keep him from mischief.
Do crazy people go to hell?
Guru Joe said: As i see it, yes!
Is insanity a good excuse?
Guru Joe replied: According to survey, yep!
I say: No way, jose.
I'm pretty sure that the 'Christian God' (should that be the 'ultimate truth' of the universe) would rather you were an out-&-out atheist than a 'just-in-case merchant'.
I would simply say, 'try to behave as you know you should; labels are incidental'.
'Enlightenment' can be a purely tail-chasing exercise; useful only in so much that you eventually wake up to its futility (hopefully).
The Golden Rule is pretty-much it for me.
All else is bull.
Anonymous,
If crazy people go to hell, I guess that's where I'm going, because I'm definitely crazy! At least, I'm quite different from most people I know.
Maybe you can send me this Guru Joe software. Hopefully it's user friendly and can answer all the enigmatic questions.
Twit,
I'd say anyone living by the Golden Rule would be safe from any god's wrath. At least, I hope so. I make mistakes every now and then, but I guess that's normal. All I can do is try to improve.
Many people lately have told me that seeking enlightenment is a waste of time, because I'm supposedly already enlightened. I could probably take a test on enlightenment, and make an A. Only, I'd just be repeating things I'd heard from other sources.
Hello Sophia, you say:
Hell. Is my toying with alternative spirituality a sin? Is the God-consciousness that I've been working towards the forbidden fruit that got Adam and Eve thrown out of the Garden of Eden?
Sophia, the garden of Eden is God-consciousness!
The fruit that got them evicted was the fruit of knowledge. The fruit of knowledge introduced duality. The fruit of knowledge introduced knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, want and dont want. It activated the obsession with the thinking mind and all the problems it introduced. It created separation between you and me and all there is. It made life into problems to be solved and goals to be attained. It created desire, and money, and greed. it created the spanish inquisition, slavery, rape, the witch trials, war and the whole damned mess. This is hell. This is mind.
If anyone needs to feel guilty then they can feel guilty about all that.
But dont feel guilty for turning your back on all that. Dont feel guilty for trying to find God Consciousness, for trying to find love and peace.
vinito
Your doing fine.
(one loon to another) :)
Vinito,
If the Garden of Eden is God-consciousness, what is on the outside? I mean, what is beyond its boundaries?
I wonder why things that were perfect from the onset had to turn imperfect. How can perfection turn imperfect? (This is sort of like a question I asked a friend the other day. "How can something come from nothing?")
If everything is God-consciousness, then even the places on the outside of the garden of Eden would be God-consciousness, which kind of implies, at least to me, that both perfection and imperfection are perfect. A balance, or harmony between the two. What do you think about this?
Mossy, thanks. (Speaking of loons, have you heard the songs of loons? I heard them in Wisconsin when I was a young teenager.)
http://www.wildlifevideo.com/sounds/Loonyod.wav
http://www.wildlifevideo.com/sounds/Loontrm.wav
http://www.wildlifevideo.com/sounds/Loonwa.wav
http://www.wildlifevideo.com/sounds/Loonho.wav
I like the tremelo song the best.
On second thought, Mossy, I think I like the whale song the best. It's the third link down in my comment above. It's such a haunting sound. I wish we had loons in Indiana.
Hello Sophia
You say:
“If the Garden of Eden is God-consciousness, what is on the outside?
The Garden of Eden is not the flower garden in your back yard! Neither is it the beautiful manicured botanical gardens in Kent. It’s not even the enormous and wild Amazon rainforest. It is this vast, mysterious, infinite, universe. Everything is made of god stuff, there is nothing outside of it. This infinite universe we are living in is gods dance, it is everything there is.
I wonder why things that were perfect from the onset had to turn imperfect. How can perfection turn imperfect?
The mind is only a tiny, finite thing, in this infinite universe, it cannot possibly understand everything there is. In fact it can absorb and understand very little. So it just grabs a piece from here and a piece from there. Then from its limited knowledge it judges this peace as good and that piece as bad. It is the mind that creates duality and judges everything.
If you didn’t think about it, wouldn’t everything be just as it is?
This is how a young child sees the world before it learns to judge and categorize everything. To a young child everything is just the way it is, a child doesn’t judge that’s it playmate is “unworthy” or “imperfect” just because it has coloured skin, or that playing in puddles and getting all wet and dirty is imperfect behaviour. This something it has to learn, that there is a perfect and imperfect. It is the mind that learns to judge what is perfect and imperfect.
which kind of implies, at least to me, that both perfection and imperfection are perfect.
That’s it exactly!
Let me finish with a Sufi story about judgement!
A wise old man farmer lived with his son, on a farm, outside a small village.
One morning when they awoke, they found a beautiful wild white stallion had wandered onto their farm. The horse was valuable, so it was a nice surprise.
When the villagers heard about this, they came to look, and exclaimed how lucky he was to have found this horse.
The wise old farmer said to them “I don’t know if its lucky of unlucky it is just what is! The villages shook their heads in disbelief at what the farmer said. Of course it is lucky they thought, the farmer is a fool, and they wandered back to the village.
The Farmers son had the idea to train the horse to be ridden, so that it would be even more valuable when they sell it. So he proceeded to train it. One day, during harvest season, he accidentally fell of the horse and broke his leg, when he fell the horse ran off and disappeared.
Some villages passing visited the farmer, and shook there heads, and said you were right all along, it wasn’t lucky that you found the horse. You now have a son with broken leg, he may always have a limp and now you have no one to help you with the harvest.
The wise old farmer said to them “I don’t know if its lucky of unlucky it is just what is! The villages shook their heads in disbelief at what the farmer said. Of course it was unlucky!
A week later the army of the king marched through the area on the way to war with neighbouring king. On it journey through the area it conscripted every able bodied young man to fight in the war. All the young men of the village went off to war and were never seen again.
The villages came to the wise old man and said you were right it wasn’t bad luck that your son broke his leg. Because of his broken leg the army left him behind. So you still have your son. His leg will heal, and he will be there to look after you in your old age. You are so lucky!
The wise old farmer said to them “I don’t know if it’s lucky of unlucky …
Vinito, I enjoyed the parable. I think it illustrated your point perfectly.
Things would be a lot more simple in this world if that's how we lived our day-to-day life. I can imagine my boss coming up to me, and saying, "Sophia, there is a problem with this work." I could say, "There is no problem. There is nothing wrong with it. It is what it is." My boss might not like that answer, so I won't really use it, but it was fun to think about. :) I would, after all, be telling the truth!
This religion thing is weird. Think about your source of information. It is OTHER PEOPLE. It is the authority issue. Do you trust the authority of these people unquestionably, like a good marine does his sargent? All of the ministers and functionaries I know I would NOT trust with my earthly life, let alone my everlasting life.
If you really want to dig into Christianity, start with a little book called "The Cloud of Unknowing" and "book of Privey Counsel" written by an unknown 14th century monk. Available at any Catholic book store. Then proceed to the Orthodox church fathers (That may be hard to find, it's rather rare stuff). They were real eye openers for me when held up against the current crap that masquerades as Christianity.
Enlightenment was known and taught in the monastic tradition.
My BS detector is flashing red on this one.
Guru Joe wouldn't tell me his opinion. http://www.freeworldgroup.com/games/gurujoe/index.html
Thanks for the Waves Sophia. I like the whale very much. The whale sound is quite romantic.
Whales are a bit like trees. They are both big and slow, though whales travel much farther. I wonder what sound trees make (when there are no humans around to hurt them).
May I play around a bit? If not, delete this comment, you have my approval, but of course, you don't need it.
About the question, something from nothing....
Imagine a pole in space, an invisible pole that is there but not seeable by any eyes, and maybe it is like a magnetic core, and around it happens to be the fields of waves/movements of invisible energy, and then imagine some intersections with those waves, and at each intersection, out of the central core, comes some very very subtle stuff, unseeable, but because it concentrates into the intersection, it then becomes denser and 'material' in nature. And then, imagine, that in that 'nature' there comes to be evolved 'eyes' that can see only that degree of concentrated invisibility. etc, etc,
Just a thought.
Hi Joe,
I know. I always come up with weird things to think or worry about. I have a strange feeling it's because I'm trying to create distractions.
Ha! Guru Joe really does exist. I thought my anonymous friend was joking. Well, I asked Guru Joe if Christianity was the answer, and he said, "It doesn't look promising."
To answer your question, no, I don't trust authority unquestioningly. Mostly I follow my feelings.
It's just that those Christians made me wonder if I'm being tempted by Satan. See what they've done to me?
Mossy,
Actually, that sound file was a loon making a sound called "whale". I suppose they named it that because it really sounds like the song of a whale. But yes, I like whales and their songs, too! I have a couple of whale albums that are quite haunting and relaxing.
Trees? I think of the sound their leaves make as the wind passes through them. Or, imagine the ents from Lord of the Rings. I think you know all about them!
Jim,
Of course, you can play around with anything you like. And, I would never dream of deleting one of your comments. I always appreciate your contributions!
I'm trying to imagine your scenario. It is certainly abstract and takes a while to wrap my mind around!
OK, I think I can imagine that. But, even an invisible pole is still something! So, how can an invisible pole come from nothing?
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