Well, there’s an interesting bit of synchronicity — smile away Jung! Recently I have been reading a book on Chiron and just this morning it prompted me to recall a conversation I had with someone called *Anslem*. He’s the only person I met with that name, which is a rather unusual one. I remember he remarked on the degree to which I empathized so readily with sad events on the news, gush-bucket that I am, and now here’s mention of St. Anselm. That’s a debate that would be revetting: Half De Witte and St. Anselm on “Who or What is God?” !
Nice to hear from you Half, and thank you for your encouragement.
Hi Shebear, I like your contributions on this thread. My feeling is that the embodied practice is crucial to experiencing a sense of transcendence – whatever we attribute that too. In fact, it is interesting that St Anselm of Canterbury’s original Ontological Argument for the existence of God was an early second millennium piece of reflection spawned by devotion and meditative practice, NOT the philosophical construct it has been engaged with as, by the Likes of Hume and Kant, down the subsequent centuries. My approach is to home in on common mistakes that often go unnoticed. It’s an important role to perform to keep the debating parameters straight – but the ‘debate’ is certainly much richer than the straight, rational discursive methods, sometimes employed. After all, this is an Astrology site that makes its contributions in rich symbols and metaphors, a large slice of the time. Keep up the great work of reflecting on your interiority and honestly communicating your findings.
Amanda dear, many thanks. I’m glad my offerings offer an angle. You know by now that I admire the breadth, of both technical acumen and artistic finesse, which you bring in both your article choices and your comments on threads – that open up new trajectories for debate and expansion. You rock! 🙂
🙂 Amanda, and thank you for opening up this discussion *and* for keeping the dance going with your comment last night.
Half, I also would like to say that I love your postings as well, and daunted though I was at attempting to venture into some sort of debate here, it is always a thrill and a challenge (!) to attempt to get into your *brilliant* mind. This was a worthwhile exercise that opened and oiled my rusty brain plus, it prodded me tune in more clearly to “whatever’s written in my heart”…..(with a nod there to the late, great Gerry Rafferty!)
she-bear: thanks for bringing it back to the simplicity of love and one’s own “am-ness!”
half: thanks for making my brain hurt once in a while. 🙂 seriously — i totally love you for it. it’s good exercise.
It sure is challenging, for me at least, to attempt to put into words what a relationship to the light/source etc can actually *mean.* It has been manmade dogma and ego driven religious practices which have obscured and limited that relationship for far too many of us, but no matter whether it is referred to as *God/Source/Light* etc, to know now that *I* alone, can choose to go inside of myself and cultivate *my* god-ness, *my* light, *my* am-ness, and not depend on any other person on this earth to facilitate that.
I can plug into what is already there within me and that is enough for me. Just to connect with that state of being which makes me grow deeply in love of my self and of others; a state that I believe is formless, timeless, boundary-less *and* wordless. I experience it not through thinking about it and analyzing it, but by releasing thought and entering *into* it. The experience is the be all and end all for me, and I commit to it and try to let my life flow from it.
Amen……….;-)
“…and the Soul/Source/God from which you have come”
—————————–
It seems to me that our attention is often focused on this ‘God’ word but actually there is also here that duality, typical of religion, that has rendered body and spirit distinct – not just as overtly described in the whole tract but even in the phrase “from which you have come”. Technically, from which you have come is a religious category – it has NO basis. It is a matter of faith at best, dogma at worst.
In a process view, Godself does not have to be co-opted into human processes in order to validate them in some way (Whenever you do that, you are right back into the guilt trap of needing a higher, validating authority). Most religious systems that are problematic are ones that are covertly religious e.g. in the mechanics of the conceptuality rather than its content.
This Oracle evidences religious conceptuality even if the word ‘God’ were excised.
Any foundational or metaphysical aspect is not intrinsically necessary to the subjective human process – so, as far as I can see, we can leave the God part to Godself.
It’s a bit like asking conventionally “Does God exist?” A precisely meaningless question! Many things exist, so what? What relevance might any God’s existence have? That’s a more interesting question. But, should anyone attempt to answer the question, with respect to any modality of causality, then one is prescribing a form of measurability. Once that happens, the realm is squarely one of religious hegemony again, manipulable once more by the humans who happen to have definitional power in these matters.
Some of the Classical Greek influences on Judeo-Christian thought attempted a philosophical theology that posited deity as ‘that which is’ – to ovtos wv – which argued in essence that any attempt at definition (remember the whole thing about not even naming or saying the name in many religious traditions?) was idolatrous, because limiting of Godself. God is God unfettered by human causality. Experience is therefore experience and the appropriate Beatles anthem to reflect this would be ‘Let it Be’.
A process view is helpful because it allows experience to be whatever it is, reality to be something uninterpreted and for us mortals to have a view of the ‘teleos’. Most ontological theories of God will still try to ape metaphysical theism by postulating attributes of God involving perfections and immutability – so that humans can side-step fears about dealing with a capricious God (an infantile fear of the parent at root), but rather a predictable, ‘rational?’, consistent one, whose love NEVER falters etc.
When we can let go and trust our own process we don’t need to be fixated on what God may or may not be doing (= F.E.A.R.). God probably had the autonomy thing mastered a few eons ago.
I like to equate God with a ‘knowing smile’, idolater that I am!
Eyes of the heart
See a being of light
A pure and precious child
Choosing birth into
Physical reality.
Beloved before she was
Beloved now
Beloved for eternity
By the eternal Beloved
The eternal Lover
The baby in the manger
of my heart.
glad to see this post has generated some discussion!
admittedly, when i read the quote i focused mainly on the soul/source part and less on the mention of “god,” with its distinctly religious & authoritarian overtones.
i had the sense that “source” may be conceived as both inner light and a kind of flow we’re all part of at all times, whether incarnated in a physical body or not. and the idea of building a relationship to source/soul speaks to the state of division that seems prevalent in many people — though perhaps not the majority of readers here; that most of us are too cut off from inner source/flow/inner light/holy spirit to ‘get it’ instead of getting caught up in our ego identities.
for sure, focusing on ‘source’ as an external entity/phenomenon is counterproductive, and a pretty tricky paradigm to work out of.
still end up doing these posts in pairs for some reason; anyway – meaning – when the phrase I Am The Light (and The Life) first began repeating itself to me, I could only perceive it outside of mySelf. It worked on me until I understood that it was my voice within me; My Voice – and it spoke to me of me (and me not separate or above or below any other).
It’s kind of like when I began this current leg of my “spiritual journey” eight-ish years ago and “I Am” was a phrase that kept repeating itself to me until I Felt It – and became it.
“I Am The Light” was the full refrain, as I recall it.
When I get lost, I remind myself and repeat the mantra.
Who said that the source is outside?
Quakers refer to the source as Inner Light. This is softer language than Holy Spirit.
It is not separate from us; it is us. It’s kind of like you are different than your name; think of your ego as your name, and you as you.
I take an ‘incremental’ view ｉｎ ｇｅｎｅｒａｌ here – and also with respect to *God*, in which regard it is a prｏｃｅｓｓ ｖｉｅｗ ｉ．ｅ． Ｎｏｔ Ｇｏｄ， ”ｔｈｅ ａｇｇｒｅｇａｔｅ ｏｆ ｐｅｒｆｅｃｔ ｍｅｔａｐｈｙｓｉｃａｌ ａｔｔｒｉｂｕｔｅｓ” ｂｕｔ Ｇｏｄ ｔｈｅ ｓｕｍｍａｔｉｏｎ ｏｆ ａｎ ｏｐｅｎ－ｅｎｄｅｄ ｐｒｏｃｅｓｓ．
Deriving a sense of *God* from the quote above solely as an external entity with some sort of gender identity, would be something I would struggle with as well Half. The notion of a *God/Source etc* that solely exists and operates from outside of me, makes me hoof in the opposite direction as fast as I can. Nowadays the only direction that feeds my soul IS to go inward to gain some experience of a creative dynamic that I’m hungry for. It is a desire to connect more consciously to a *source* within me. This dynamic of the conscious connecting that I seek, echos your line: “Relationship to existence, especially one’s own, is the essence” and that is my starting point as well.
The experience I am having of late (via a beginner’s commitment to meditation each morning) is of subtle hints of a state of being that feels honest and true *and* quite powerful. If I’m lucky enough to experience these fleeting moments of ecstasy, I intuit them as a place where I get to rest my weary, worldly self, all the while tapping into some liberating creative thinking. I’m connecting with a wordless part of me and I attempt to dance with it and the dance is more alive and fun if I am fully present in it and feel on an equal par to it.
Hopefully by honouring and nourishing this partnership, I will grow to align more deeply with the intrinsic nature of my real self and allow what is my potential to unfold. I believe it is working already, as my life feels that much fuller as a result. Anxiety levels and obsessive second guessing of myself are thankfully on the wane of late as I get to carry this energy around with me and apply it to all that I do in my daily living.
Religion does not disprove god — only abuse god. I say this understanding that ‘god’ is a concept for most people, not a tangible experience and the concept is what is abused as control/morality. Beneath this we have the potential for some underlying reality; as Jung said, most religion gets in the way of the religious experience.
Sounds a bit like religion to me.. Making it a relation of a perceiving subject to some objective source..
Relationship to existence, especially one’s own, is the essence.. I’ll let *God* decide whether he/she/it feels either liberated or insecure about that fact..
This is the heart and truth of it. If I am to change anything in my life, I can begin by honouring this primary relationship.
Well, there’s an interesting bit of synchronicity — smile away Jung! Recently I have been reading a book on Chiron and just this morning it prompted me to recall a conversation I had with someone called *Anslem*. He’s the only person I met with that name, which is a rather unusual one. I remember he remarked on the degree to which I empathized so readily with sad events on the news, gush-bucket that I am, and now here’s mention of St. Anselm. That’s a debate that would be revetting: Half De Witte and St. Anselm on “Who or What is God?” !
Nice to hear from you Half, and thank you for your encouragement.
Hi Shebear, I like your contributions on this thread. My feeling is that the embodied practice is crucial to experiencing a sense of transcendence – whatever we attribute that too. In fact, it is interesting that St Anselm of Canterbury’s original Ontological Argument for the existence of God was an early second millennium piece of reflection spawned by devotion and meditative practice, NOT the philosophical construct it has been engaged with as, by the Likes of Hume and Kant, down the subsequent centuries. My approach is to home in on common mistakes that often go unnoticed. It’s an important role to perform to keep the debating parameters straight – but the ‘debate’ is certainly much richer than the straight, rational discursive methods, sometimes employed. After all, this is an Astrology site that makes its contributions in rich symbols and metaphors, a large slice of the time. Keep up the great work of reflecting on your interiority and honestly communicating your findings.
Amanda dear, many thanks. I’m glad my offerings offer an angle. You know by now that I admire the breadth, of both technical acumen and artistic finesse, which you bring in both your article choices and your comments on threads – that open up new trajectories for debate and expansion. You rock! 🙂
🙂 Amanda, and thank you for opening up this discussion *and* for keeping the dance going with your comment last night.
Half, I also would like to say that I love your postings as well, and daunted though I was at attempting to venture into some sort of debate here, it is always a thrill and a challenge (!) to attempt to get into your *brilliant* mind. This was a worthwhile exercise that opened and oiled my rusty brain plus, it prodded me tune in more clearly to “whatever’s written in my heart”…..(with a nod there to the late, great Gerry Rafferty!)
she-bear: thanks for bringing it back to the simplicity of love and one’s own “am-ness!”
half: thanks for making my brain hurt once in a while. 🙂 seriously — i totally love you for it. it’s good exercise.
It sure is challenging, for me at least, to attempt to put into words what a relationship to the light/source etc can actually *mean.* It has been manmade dogma and ego driven religious practices which have obscured and limited that relationship for far too many of us, but no matter whether it is referred to as *God/Source/Light* etc, to know now that *I* alone, can choose to go inside of myself and cultivate *my* god-ness, *my* light, *my* am-ness, and not depend on any other person on this earth to facilitate that.
I can plug into what is already there within me and that is enough for me. Just to connect with that state of being which makes me grow deeply in love of my self and of others; a state that I believe is formless, timeless, boundary-less *and* wordless. I experience it not through thinking about it and analyzing it, but by releasing thought and entering *into* it. The experience is the be all and end all for me, and I commit to it and try to let my life flow from it.
Amen……….;-)
“…and the Soul/Source/God from which you have come”
—————————–
It seems to me that our attention is often focused on this ‘God’ word but actually there is also here that duality, typical of religion, that has rendered body and spirit distinct – not just as overtly described in the whole tract but even in the phrase “from which you have come”. Technically, from which you have come is a religious category – it has NO basis. It is a matter of faith at best, dogma at worst.
In a process view, Godself does not have to be co-opted into human processes in order to validate them in some way (Whenever you do that, you are right back into the guilt trap of needing a higher, validating authority). Most religious systems that are problematic are ones that are covertly religious e.g. in the mechanics of the conceptuality rather than its content.
This Oracle evidences religious conceptuality even if the word ‘God’ were excised.
Any foundational or metaphysical aspect is not intrinsically necessary to the subjective human process – so, as far as I can see, we can leave the God part to Godself.
It’s a bit like asking conventionally “Does God exist?” A precisely meaningless question! Many things exist, so what? What relevance might any God’s existence have? That’s a more interesting question. But, should anyone attempt to answer the question, with respect to any modality of causality, then one is prescribing a form of measurability. Once that happens, the realm is squarely one of religious hegemony again, manipulable once more by the humans who happen to have definitional power in these matters.
Some of the Classical Greek influences on Judeo-Christian thought attempted a philosophical theology that posited deity as ‘that which is’ – to ovtos wv – which argued in essence that any attempt at definition (remember the whole thing about not even naming or saying the name in many religious traditions?) was idolatrous, because limiting of Godself. God is God unfettered by human causality. Experience is therefore experience and the appropriate Beatles anthem to reflect this would be ‘Let it Be’.
A process view is helpful because it allows experience to be whatever it is, reality to be something uninterpreted and for us mortals to have a view of the ‘teleos’. Most ontological theories of God will still try to ape metaphysical theism by postulating attributes of God involving perfections and immutability – so that humans can side-step fears about dealing with a capricious God (an infantile fear of the parent at root), but rather a predictable, ‘rational?’, consistent one, whose love NEVER falters etc.
When we can let go and trust our own process we don’t need to be fixated on what God may or may not be doing (= F.E.A.R.). God probably had the autonomy thing mastered a few eons ago.
I like to equate God with a ‘knowing smile’, idolater that I am!
Eyes of the heart
See a being of light
A pure and precious child
Choosing birth into
Physical reality.
Beloved before she was
Beloved now
Beloved for eternity
By the eternal Beloved
The eternal Lover
The baby in the manger
of my heart.
glad to see this post has generated some discussion!
admittedly, when i read the quote i focused mainly on the soul/source part and less on the mention of “god,” with its distinctly religious & authoritarian overtones.
i had the sense that “source” may be conceived as both inner light and a kind of flow we’re all part of at all times, whether incarnated in a physical body or not. and the idea of building a relationship to source/soul speaks to the state of division that seems prevalent in many people — though perhaps not the majority of readers here; that most of us are too cut off from inner source/flow/inner light/holy spirit to ‘get it’ instead of getting caught up in our ego identities.
for sure, focusing on ‘source’ as an external entity/phenomenon is counterproductive, and a pretty tricky paradigm to work out of.
still end up doing these posts in pairs for some reason; anyway – meaning – when the phrase I Am The Light (and The Life) first began repeating itself to me, I could only perceive it outside of mySelf. It worked on me until I understood that it was my voice within me; My Voice – and it spoke to me of me (and me not separate or above or below any other).
It’s kind of like when I began this current leg of my “spiritual journey” eight-ish years ago and “I Am” was a phrase that kept repeating itself to me until I Felt It – and became it.
“I Am The Light” was the full refrain, as I recall it.
When I get lost, I remind myself and repeat the mantra.
Who said that the source is outside?
Quakers refer to the source as Inner Light. This is softer language than Holy Spirit.
It is not separate from us; it is us. It’s kind of like you are different than your name; think of your ego as your name, and you as you.
I take an ‘incremental’ view ｉｎ ｇｅｎｅｒａｌ here – and also with respect to *God*, in which regard it is a prｏｃｅｓｓ ｖｉｅｗ ｉ．ｅ． Ｎｏｔ Ｇｏｄ， ”ｔｈｅ ａｇｇｒｅｇａｔｅ ｏｆ ｐｅｒｆｅｃｔ ｍｅｔａｐｈｙｓｉｃａｌ ａｔｔｒｉｂｕｔｅｓ” ｂｕｔ Ｇｏｄ ｔｈｅ ｓｕｍｍａｔｉｏｎ ｏｆ ａｎ ｏｐｅｎ－ｅｎｄｅｄ ｐｒｏｃｅｓｓ．
Ｗｅ ｓｈｏｕｌｄ ｓｅｔ ＊Ｇｏｄ＊ ｆｒｅｅ， ｉｄｅａｌｌｙ．
Ａｎｙ Ｈｉｇｈｅｒ Ｓｅｌｆ ｓｐｉｒｉｔｕａｌｉｔｙ／ｍｅｄｉｔａｔｉｖｅ ｓｔｕｆｆ ｉｓ ａｎ ｅｎｈａｎｃｅｍｅｎｔ， ｉｔ ｄｏｅｓｎ’ｔ ｒｅｐｌａｃｅ ｏｒ ｓｕｐｅｒｓｅｄｅ ａｎｙ ｏｔｈｅｒ ａｗａｒｅｎｅｓｓ－ｃｕｌｔｉｖａｔｉｎｇ ｐｅｒｓｐｅｃｔｉｖｅ － ａｌｌ ｃｏｎｓｃｉｏｕｓ ｓｅｌｆ－ｓｈａｐｉｎｇ， ｉｓ， ｔｏ ｍｙ ｍｉｎｄ， ａ Ｇｏｄ－ｐｒｏｃｅｓｓ． Ｉ’ｄ ｌｉｋｅ ｔｏ ｔｈｉｎｋ ｔｈａｔ ａｎｙ ｓｕｐｒｅｍｅ ｂｅｉｎｇ ｏｕｔ ｔｈｅｒｅ ｍｉｇｈｔ ｉｎｄｗｅｌｌ ｓｕｃｈ ａｕｔｈｅｎｔｉｃｉｔｙ ｉｎｃｒｅａｓｉｎｇｌｙ ｅｆｆｉｃｉｅｎｔｌｙ ａｓ ｗｅ ａｒｅ ｉｎｃｒｅａｓｉｎｇｌｙ ｔｒｕｅ ｔｏ ｗｈａｔ ｗｅ ｐｅｒｓｏｎａｌｌｙ ｄｉｓｃｏｖｅｒ ａｓ ａｘｉｏｍａｔｉｃ ｗｉｔｈｉｎ ｏｕｒ ｕｎｉｑｕｅ ｐｅｒｓｐｅｃｔｉｖａｌ ｅｘｉｓｔｅｎｃｅ．
Ｊｅｅｚ， Ｉ’ｖｅ ＮＯ ＩＤＥＡ ＨＯＷ Ｉ ｃｈａｎｇｅｄ ｔｈｉｓ ｆｏｎｔ， ｃａｎ’ｔ ｃｈａｎｇｅ ｉｔ ｂａｃｋ ｂｙ ａｌｌ ａｃｃｏｕｎｔｓ！
Deriving a sense of *God* from the quote above solely as an external entity with some sort of gender identity, would be something I would struggle with as well Half. The notion of a *God/Source etc* that solely exists and operates from outside of me, makes me hoof in the opposite direction as fast as I can. Nowadays the only direction that feeds my soul IS to go inward to gain some experience of a creative dynamic that I’m hungry for. It is a desire to connect more consciously to a *source* within me. This dynamic of the conscious connecting that I seek, echos your line: “Relationship to existence, especially one’s own, is the essence” and that is my starting point as well.
The experience I am having of late (via a beginner’s commitment to meditation each morning) is of subtle hints of a state of being that feels honest and true *and* quite powerful. If I’m lucky enough to experience these fleeting moments of ecstasy, I intuit them as a place where I get to rest my weary, worldly self, all the while tapping into some liberating creative thinking. I’m connecting with a wordless part of me and I attempt to dance with it and the dance is more alive and fun if I am fully present in it and feel on an equal par to it.
Hopefully by honouring and nourishing this partnership, I will grow to align more deeply with the intrinsic nature of my real self and allow what is my potential to unfold. I believe it is working already, as my life feels that much fuller as a result. Anxiety levels and obsessive second guessing of myself are thankfully on the wane of late as I get to carry this energy around with me and apply it to all that I do in my daily living.
Religion does not disprove god — only abuse god. I say this understanding that ‘god’ is a concept for most people, not a tangible experience and the concept is what is abused as control/morality. Beneath this we have the potential for some underlying reality; as Jung said, most religion gets in the way of the religious experience.
Sounds a bit like religion to me.. Making it a relation of a perceiving subject to some objective source..
Relationship to existence, especially one’s own, is the essence.. I’ll let *God* decide whether he/she/it feels either liberated or insecure about that fact..
This is the heart and truth of it. If I am to change anything in my life, I can begin by honouring this primary relationship.