The Harm Done By Religion

[The_Phantom_Stranger]

I agree you cannot make someone believe. The actual idea is not to make you believe, but to try and persuade you to correct something that is noticeably going wrong. Like the fall of Rome. Maybe someday the words will wake up at the right time and help you. This is an obligation to warn people of danger, or you are responsible for that person.

Ezekiel 3

¹⁶ And it came to pass at the end of seven days, that the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,

¹⁷ Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me.

¹⁸ When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.

¹⁹ Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.

²⁰ Again, When a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness, and commit iniquity, and I lay a stumbling-block before him, he shall die: because thou hast not given him warning, he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he hath done shall not be remembered; but his blood will I require at thine hand.

²¹ Nevertheless if thou warn the righteous man, that the righteous sin not, and he doth not sin, he shall surely live, because he is warned; also thou hast delivered thy soul.

[+Grim Reaper 6]

40 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

Some people don't seem to realize you can't badger or coerce or guilt-shame someone to either believe or disbelieve. It's their choice and no one else's business. 

Nothing could be more truthful than your statement above. Its also very obvious who on this forum attempts to do just what you have stated. I dont understand why they do it over and over again, because they never come close to succeeding in their attempts, so for whatever reason they just cant get the message.

Peace

[larryp]

On 11/6/2021 at 9:44 PM, Manwon Lender said:

But, the way that Orthodox Catholic Priest handled that poor child was like the Child was being Water Boarded, to me those actions were uncalled, unnecessary, ignorant, and completely asinine !!

Peace

It was also unscriptural. 

[+Grim Reaper 6]

Just now, larryp said:

It was also unscriptural. 

Well as far as being unscriptural is concerned I am unable to comment, so I will take your word for it. But, in my opinion the way that Priest was acting very foolishly and in the process it could have harmed that child. So I can see nothing that was good about that situation at all, but I suppose that why that specific Orthodox Catholic order has split from the Roman Catholic order which in my opinion is the best for all concerned!

[larryp]

1 hour ago, Hammerclaw said:

Some people don't seem to realize you can't badger or coerce or guilt-shame someone to either believe or disbelieve. It's their choice and no one else's business. 

YHWH

I wouldn't characterize it as you have. Instead, I would use words like pursued, encouraged, and induce to prompt them over. 

[+Sherapy]

3 hours ago, Crazy Horse said:

I agree with your point on non-attachment.

What has happened has happened and there is no changing that. But if one may accept the good with the bad and the ugly, all as one, as a reflection of GOD trying to teach you something, then there is no "footprint" in the mind, no karma remade, and peace.

And from this place anything is possible.

And for the record, one is not attached to the idea of having a connection, to THAT, in-fact, as stated above, any attachment is unhelpful when seeking GOD, it actually gets in the way, 

Therefore, ego it is not.

 

At best you gained a calm, relaxed state during your meditation practice. The rest of your post is undergirded by your ego, . In your case, being calm and relaxed has led to grandiose claims of god connections and god lessons. This is attachment. 
 

All the best. 
 

 

 

 

[+joc]

3 hours ago, Crazy Horse said:

And, even if the Church has abandoned Christs teachings, then why throw-out the baby (Jesus, and his message) with the bath water?

That's not smart!!

Because the baby is a myth!  Virgins don't have babies.  Dead people don't come back to life.  With the Church the only doctrine is tithe, tithe, tithe  It's all about the money...and if you buy the false premise of thousands of years ago...that's...not smart...imo.

[+Hammerclaw]

7 minutes ago, larryp said:

YHWH

I wouldn't characterize it as you have. Instead, I would use words like pursued, encouraged, and induce to prompt them over. 

Ahh! The missionary position. 

[+Sherapy]

3 hours ago, Crazy Horse said:

If one has no thoughts at that particular moment, then there are no delusions because there is no judgment or discernment either.

And as previously stated there are no hallucinations either.

And the only reason to talk about such things is that someone may find them interesting, and or, helpful, in their own practice.

Personally, I really don't mind either way, only I feel drawn to discuss these topics right now..

One may take them to heart and act upon them, and so know the truth for oneself, or not.

Your choice.

 

It seems you want to talk about that you know god, now. The facts are you meditated became calm and relaxed and arbitrarily decided you connected to god who is now guiding you and teaching you.  And, you are on here trying to help others. Help them how?
 

Slow your roll CH, your ego has you by the horns. 
 

Anyone can reach a calm relaxed state and will at times during meditation, all it requires is practice. 

Edited November 10, 2021 by Sherapy

[XenoFish]

2 minutes ago, Sherapy said:

It seems you want to talk about that you know god, now. The facts are you meditated became calm and relaxed and arbitrarily decided you connected to god who is now guiding you and teaching you.  And, you are on here trying to help others. Help them how?
 

Slow your roll CH, your ego has you by the horns. 
 

Anyone can reach a calm relaxed state and will at times during meditation, all it requires is practice. 

The no thought state isn't unusual. Any time where we are deeply focused something like it happens. 

[larryp]

14 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

Ahh! The missionary position. 

No! It's the true worship position, which demonstrates that YHWH has nothing to do with hellfire, purgatory, and the celebration of Jesus' birth. To all the nations, we must tell, we must tell.

[lightly]

2 hours ago, larryp said:

You can almost understand why Catholics dismiss the old for the new.

... But then  PROTESTantism is a further step toward accesability?

[+Hammerclaw]

1 minute ago, larryp said:

No! It's the true worship position, which demonstrates that YHWH has nothing to do with hellfire, purgatory, and the celebration of Jesus' birth. To all the nations, we must tell, we must tell.

Nice. Well, to quote Miller from The Expanse: "I still say you've never been laid, kid."

[XenoFish]

https://www.gotquestions.org/true-worship.html

Just sayin' not seeing many believers doing this or many that haven't jumped off the deep end of a dry pool.

[+Sherapy]

30 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

The no thought state isn't unusual. Any time where we are deeply focused something like it happens. 

Exactly, and CH is operating from his “me center” the medial frontal cortex, his posts support  he is new to meditation and stuck in his reality tunnel of needing to believe he has been saved by an attachment figure. God is the go to attachment figure for many. 
 

Edited November 10, 2021 by Sherapy

[XenoFish]

6 minutes ago, Sherapy said:

Exactly, and CH is operating from his “me center” the medial frontal cortex, his posts support  he is new to meditation and stuck in his reality tunnel of needing to believe he has been saved by an attachment figure. God is the go to attachment figure for many. 
 

The thing to me is that if God is supposedly love. Then a thorough understand of what love (on all levels) is. The process of becoming god( a loving being) would be mostly internal. Love others as you would love yourself. I think most of the Christian teaching involve a inner to outer approach. Perhaps this is just me thinking about it in terms of mysticism. So too "connect" to God one would need to embody God's qualities. This is of course considering that God isn't a prick.

Edited November 10, 2021 by XenoFish

[+Liquid Gardens]

5 hours ago, eight bits said:

You were asking what I believed.

Changing the question from one of fact to one of belief (= something to which I am a witness) doesn't compel that only yes or else no would be responsive answers.

I think the original question was not 'what' you believed technically, but 'do' you believe.  "Do you believe" on its own does usually (not always) compel/suggest a yes or no answer.  If you 'lack sufficient information to make an answer', then that would be a 'no' you do not currently believe in god, logically and semantically.  It is unknown whether adding the technically unrequested information, 'but I don't not believe in god either' is any more relevant than "well I grew up Catholic, but then was an atheist in college for a while, etc" to the question; it adds additional information and qualification to the yes/no answer, but don't know if it's at all relevant to the question. 

[+Hammerclaw]

7 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

The thing to me is that if God is supposedly love. Then a thorough understand of what love (on all levels) is. The process of becoming god( a loving being) would be mostly internal. Love others as you would love yourself. I think most of the Christian teaching involve a inner to outer approach. Perhaps this is just me thinking about it in terms of mysticism. So too "connect" to God one would need to embody God's qualities. This is of course considering that God isn't a prick.

He is a prick. According to Christian theology, God is the source of everything, good and evil. It makes sense, in a Universe completely God's creation. It's a hard concept for Bible thumpers to wrap their heads around. God created imperfection and evil, in a perfectly natural universe where the chips fall where they may. 

The average person doesn't believe, not really. It's like astrology, where, objectively, we don't believe in it, but subjectively we kind of like to think we do. It's only later in life we realize death and God are very profound concepts and the sometimes trite and pithy morality tales we're told about them hardly do them justice. The perspective of the Ancients on the topic, whose literature is our reference material, was, frankly, quite limited. 

Judeo-Christian meditation, at least in the classic sense, is a different beast from Buddhist meditation. Instead of emptying oneself, one embraces the concept of omnipresent deity to achieve a rapport with one's inner duality of flesh and spirit. The flesh may walk in the garden alone, but the spirit is never alone, ever. A good example of this sort of meditation is perfectly encapsulated in Psalm 63.                     

Psalm 63 KJV - O God, thou art my God; early will I - Bible Gateway

[XenoFish]

6 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

He is a prick. According to Christian theology, God is the source of everything, good and evil. It makes sense, in a Universe completely God's creation. It's a hard concept for Bible thumpers to wrap their heads around. God created imperfection and evil, in a perfectly natural universe where the chips fall where they may. 

The average person doesn't believe, not really. It's like astrology, where, objectively, we don't believe in it, but subjectively we kind of like to think we do. It's only later in life we realize death and God are very profound concepts and the sometimes trite and pithy morality tales we're told about them hardly do them justice. The perspective of the Ancients on the topic, whose literature is our reference material, was, frankly, quite limited. 

Judeo-Christian meditation, at least in the classic sense, is a different beast from Buddhist meditation. Instead of emptying oneself, one embraces the concept of omnipresent deity to achieve a rapport with one's inner duality of flesh and spirit. The flesh may walk in the garden alone, but the spirit is never alone, ever. A good example of this sort of meditation is perfectly encapsulated in Psalm 63.                     

Psalm 63 KJV - O God, thou art my God; early will I - Bible Gateway

Imperfection is the only perfect thing. There needs to be a cause and effect. We would never know good without evil. Same goes for doing good when bad things happen.

[The_Phantom_Stranger]

5 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

He is a prick. According to Christian theology, God is the source of everything, good and evil. It makes sense, in a Universe completely God's creation. It's a hard concept for Bible thumpers to wrap their heads around. God created imperfection and evil, in a perfectly natural universe where the chips fall where they may. 

The average person doesn't believe, not really. It's like astrology, where, objectively, we don't believe in it, but subjectively we kind of like to think we do. It's only later in life we realize death and God are very profound concepts and the sometimes trite and pithy morality tales we're told about them hardly do them justice. The perspective of the Ancients on the topic, whose literature is our reference material, was, frankly, quite limited. 

Judeo-Christian meditation, at least in the classic sense, is a different beast from Buddhist meditation. Instead of emptying oneself, one embraces the concept of omnipresent deity to achieve a rapport with one's inner duality of flesh and spirit. The flesh may walk in the garden alone, but the spirit is never alone, ever. A good example of this sort of meditation is perfectly encapsulated in Psalm 63.                     

Psalm 63 KJV - O God, thou art my God; early will I - Bible Gateway

You might be confused. In the 40 Buddhist meditations there are meditations such as meditating on the image of a whole town filled with corpses or meditate on soldiers beating the corpses. The Dalai Lamma is a reincarnating Buddhist warlord. Violence and death are a universal constant.

[+Hammerclaw]

1 minute ago, XenoFish said:

Imperfection is the only perfect thing. There needs to be a cause and effect. We would never know good without evil. Same goes for doing good when bad things happen.

The singular constant in our lives is change; From good to bad, from sunshine to rain, from youth to old age. One can't appreciate the one without the other.

[+Hammerclaw]

3 minutes ago, The_Phantom_Stranger said:

You might be confused. In the 40 Buddhist meditations there are meditations such as meditating on the image of a whole town filled with corpses or meditate on soldiers beating the corpses. The Dalai Lamma is a reincarnating Buddhist warlord. Violence and death are a universal constant.

I'm talking about the Western, sanitized version of Buddhist meditation. I'm quite aware I'm suppose to kill a Buddha if I meet one on the road.

[The_Phantom_Stranger]

9 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

I'm talking about the Western, sanitized version of Buddhist meditation. I'm quite aware I'm suppose to kill a Buddha if I meet one on the road.

That's like the same thing as Christians who get their whole religion from secondary sources like novels about the faith but never read the actual Bible.

[+Hammerclaw]

6 minutes ago, The_Phantom_Stranger said:

That's like the same thing as Christians who get their whole religion from secondary sources like novels about the faith but never read the actual Bible.

Well, that's the original way most Christians and Buddhists use to get their religion, since they couldn't read. Most Westerners who engage in "Buddhist" meditation aren't Buddhists; they just think of it as therapy. 

Edited November 10, 2021 by Hammerclaw

[The_Phantom_Stranger]

6 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

Well, that's the original way most Christians and Buddhists use to get their religion, since they couldn't read. Most Westerners who engage in "Buddhist" meditation aren't Buddhists; they just think of it as therapy. 

400 years ago. We can all read now.