Brendan

Best regards, Jeff

Brendan

We could talk past each other all day long, each sure we’re speaking from the larger perspective, analyzing and interpreting the other’s experience and viewpoint from his personal world view.
There is much historical and anthropological evidence that the human primal religious experience is that of a creator God. Is that evidence of an accurate gut response by humankind or evidence of delusion? Take your pick. By the way in your understanding what is the ultimate origin of ignorance/delusion (we call it sin, I don’t know what terminology you would use). I don’t know if you hold to the concept of a perfect compasssionate buddha nature, if so how did what we call suffering and ignorance and so on originate in your opinion.Is “bad” just a trough in the rolling waves of samsara and “good” a crest? Just contrasts like purple and orange? Speaking of not being pc – I thought believing in the Bible, Jesus and so on fell into that category! Show’s the different subculture I belong to I guess. In any case I freely admit our explanation for evil – the initial sin of humanity and our continued choice in that direction and the influence of evil spiritual forces is not acceptable to the many minds.
Such huge topics to discuss!
Jeff

Brendan

An Experience:
Years ago I had a life changing experience. I was spending a weekend at a Trappist monastery. A friend and I entered the church for the first time, We suddenly and simultaneously each had a marked spiritual experience. We stared at each other in shock and surprise. It was the presence of the Holy Spirit, fiery and enlivening. It lasted but a moment. What shocked me most was not the mere fact of experiencing “spirit” (I was used to that in my new age and eastern religious exposure) it was that it simply wasn’t the same spirit as I had encountered in those arenas. I had been taught the cardinal principle that God or Spirit or the Absolute in every religion, despite different approaches and words, was the same in essence and taste. I could no longer think that, based on my experience and what I was reading in the Bible. I was undone. Unless I reinterpreted and redefined the words of the Bible in the light of systems alien to the Bible – making it say things it doesn’t. – I could no longer blend Christ and Hinduism/Buddhism. I still had a way to go but eventually I left eastern and new age thought behind and became a Trinitarian/Nicene creed type as that understanding had the best fit to scripture and my own experience of the Three Persons of the Godhead.

A Parable:
The coast of Namibia is the only place in Africa where elephants swim in the ocean. Two gnats went out to sea. One landed on an elephant; the other on a whale. Both returned to land and shared their experiences. While their respective accounts had differences both said something like this: “It was huge beyond belief, wet, gray, and above all, alive!” Many gnat theologians decided the two gnats had experienced the same thing, while others disagreed. The discussion continues.

Obviously the whale is Yahweh. Consider an alternative to boring, generic contemplative orthodoxy – The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!

What is the experience of the elephant? I think the “elephant” is deifying and absolutizing via “spiritual” practices and teachings your inward awareness which is created in God’s image. Your inner awareness and self is Godlike by being created in God’s image and through proper training and continued programming you can expand it into an experience and perception of “absolute reality”. From the Christian perspective this is embracing the primal lie of Genesis that you can be as God! and is the root of eastern religions. When we trust in Jesus we become one spirit with him according to the Bible and his I Amness is now inward not merely outward. Anyway this is the conclusion I’ve come to in this area. I know this is offensive to sincere and well intentioned followers of eastern spiritualities, but Jesus Christ is termed the rock of offense and the stumbling stone. I know I barked my shins against him and it was painful, but in the end I trusted in him.

Sincerely, Jeff

Is this true? There are nuances like emanation, immanence and pantheism you simply have not considered.

“Creationism” refers to a now-political movement in the United States of What-the-Fuck-Happened to America that proposes that we teach children that five thousand years ago a deva named “Yahweh” or devas named “Elohim” made the earth out of mud that was underneath a puddle, and that a character only later identified as “Satan” buried fake dinosaur bones in the soil to fool us into believing otherwise. perhaps if the political milleau were otherwise this would not be an issue. The word you mean to use is “Theism”.

Anyway, I liked Part II better, though the way Wilber uses “states” and “stages” and some of the other Integral Jargon is difficult to follow at times. E.g., a “state” is a state of consciousness sometimes, then a stage of meditative practice, but you can’t tell if it’s ever a concentration state though in Part I he refered to textbook insight-preceded-by-concentration. Etc. Anyway his theory that moral or even psychological development is a separate continuum from contemplative development is as always helpful