If I got ranting on this I'm afraid I'd never stop and frankly I don't think my keyboard could handle the labour lol.
Oh okay. Thank you for clarifying.
It's hard to work out what to actually say, as well as getting over the hurdle of whether to at all. Its a couple of years since I tried to, here in the forum, and I'm really glad because, just like you say, I feel very much more relaxed and at home with sharing it, and I have some idea now how to try and express it.
I have strong feelings about how to express things to other folks. We are all in different places spiritually and facing in different directions. I'm happy these days to describe where I am, and the direction I'm travelling, even though I can't express it very well - and hopefully that gives some insight to at least some others, as well as helping me see things more clearly. But other people aren't standing where I am, and looking in the same direction metaphorically speaking. Who am I to say what's the way for them from where they are? To use a crude analogy, it's no good telling someone how to get to Edinburgh from my home in Cheshire if they are coming from Lima, say, or Madagascar. The only thing I'd say that's a little stronger than this is that I believe we should all try and be authentic in how we work out the significance of our lives - by that I mean it shouldn't be derivative but something we have taken responsibility for finding and choosing for ourselves (that does include possibly rejecting the idea that it's worth doing at all lol). This isn't a one-off thing, but a process with lots of ups and downs, joys and sorrows, mistakes and eurekas, and we may choose to go it alone or in the company of others. To me, I feel that it's the authenticity that matters in the end not the particular road travelled on.
I find it's a privilege and a great pleasure to walk a little distance along the way with different people as they travel their own roads.
I don’t know if God even exists. My life has been marked my God’s absence and silence, which to me has been enough to not trust those that claim to know God.
Just do something. Anything. Perform something miraculous before my very eyes. Speak to me like you did the ancients. Then I will prob believe in you, or that I am crazy.
Just do something. Anything. Perform something miraculous before my very eyes. Speak to me like you did the ancients. Then I will prob believe in you, or that I am crazy.
I find that I receive people's feelings about God better when they simply describe their own experience and how their relationship with God looks in their day to day life. If I sense that what they're telling me is with the intention to "help me" or that they're only conveying something because they think I need to be guided in a certain direction then I am decidedly less interested. I'd rather just read someone's honest experience and how God manifests for them in their own lives instead of feeling that I'm not so subtly being preached to or being made to feel that God could help me. In that way, we don't have to stand in the same position. To use your example about traveling, maybe it's not about getting to a specific destination at all. Maybe I just like to hear about what life is like for you over in Cheshire, and you might be interested to hear about how things are over in Canada, and there's value enough in that.
That's just how I see it from the outside anyway. I think at the end of the day I'd just rather see what's real for someone else and enjoy that for them, if that makes any sense.
It makes a lot of sense. I think I t’s a great thing to see without prejudice what life is like through the eyes of other people.
I have learned to be very cautious of what I ask, but it is my feeling it would be something to make you think a very long time.
I have also learned to be careful what I think.
I am glad if these approaches work for you.
I'm not entirely sure where I stand on this. That is to say that it is complicated, and there are many factors that are deeply personal. 'God' and I have had sort of a game of tag going, wherein I think I've grasped its nature, and then I'm left trying to hold onto smoke. I speak/pray, where 'it' (I struggle placing a pronoun on a transcendental being-- though I'll sometimes use 'he') is often taciturn one moment, and the next I'm left overwhelmed or inundated with awe. I suppose that is the conundrum of belief. It requires you to trust in the hope that 'God' is there, listening intently, even in the moments that you feel absolutely nothing. Though, remarkably, it isn't always nothing. However, feelings often lead us astray, so I don't put much stock in them alone. I think I've reasoned that many of my near-death experiences in life have been two-fold. In that it was partly keen awareness for what to do, and partly a watchful eye willfully keeping me here until I'm no longer meant to be (I understand that this mindset contains within it a whole slew of ramifications, but those aren't my responsibility to defend or speak on, merely an observation based on my own experience, and not necessarily true of others experiences). The amount of things that I've lived through aren't something I care to expound on at this time though. Some of it is veiled in my blog. Some of it is in the past, where I'd rather leave it. However, there are things which were otherworldly in a spiritual sense, that I cannot really deny as being anything but evidence of a watchful presence.
I think my belief is fundamentally rooted in the notion that we are all interconnected, as I've witnessed that this is the case, and is paramount to our purposes here. The man-made ideals of 'God' don't really sit right with me, but I do think a presence exists. I'm still grappling with the what, and exploring and analyzing (this is how I'm nurturing my belief). Ultimately, I'm okay if there isn't a clear or definable answer. There are words or ways of life, which I glean from in many religious texts, as their wisdom is relevant in a profound way (how the Bible talks about dealing with finances/relationships/love, or how the texts written by Buddhist monastics speak about centering oneself, etc.).
As for the latter question, I think it isn't so much as a 'must', as it is a 'knowing' and experiencing that it is the case. I don't have a need to push that onto others, nor do I hope to ever elucidate someone else to the presence of a 'God', as some sort of responsibility. I think if 'God' wants to be known, you'll find 'it', if you seek. I will say, that those who live with some degree of hope are far more pleasant to be around than those who don't. Living without hope or purpose, tends to lead to a life of bitter despair and an emptiness. I've lived it, and it was miserable. There are also principles which lack any meaning without that hope, and I find it odd that some claim to hold to those principles, while in the same moment clinging to the belief that nothing matters. However, people choose their own way, and that's absolutely their prerogative. I'm okay doing my own thing, and letting them do theirs.
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This is what I mean by it to a t. That it does feel lonely in this case at times dealing with suffering and not having that compassion.
This is a lovely way of thinking about it and keeping the door open. I tend to keep myself from that and try to be authentic in a way that is still true to where I am in mind. Even if it gets me in bad social situations. It’s better that than trying to control it, and no that’s not an accusation towards any latter type of thinking.
wonderfully put
my own beliefs are similar. I get more meaning in the realization that everything is connected, that we are all part of a cosmic whole. That is enough for me, and I no longer need anything beyond that. I accept what is, at least that is my goal.
Questions of god aside, I have come to find great meaning in the constant awareness that life is pulsating with consciousness and feeling. Every living thing has something of this. That alone drives compassion toward all living things, but especially toward people, as well as empathy. We are all connected in this way.
Is a god needed at this point? I don’t think so. I think religion can help people come to the same realizations. To be honest, I have the perspectives I do because of religion and “god”. I have shed that skin for quite some time now, and left it somewhere beneath the tree of knowledge.
I am not yet at a place where I can substantially react to all aforementioned notes, but I don't want to lose my following on the subject. That said, please forgive the parceled responses.
This is how it is difficult for me to perceive myself as alone in these moments or at all. While I also mostly just go on with my days as if in complete independence, it can be rather clear at times how much I rely on such an omnipresent saving grace. The moments of, "i can do this and I shall fight on" occur only after I am cognizant of the loving presence again. I would even go as far as saying that I do rely on such an experience of salvation.
I quote because being by my own strength is familiar to me. Over time, I've lost my connection to the rituals of religion and have simply been left with moments of silence in the attempt to find the Presence. To listen. At that, I've observed that my days have somewhat been mechanic to me--- relying more so on planners, watches, and checklists and less on prayer and signs of the cross (unless desperate--although I am often desperate). When I'm on these runs, however, I eventually hit some sort of emotional road block. Maybe it's simply burnout. The irony of it is that in this sort of despair, the Presence becomes lucid to me once again. I feel carried, or even cradled, during the worst of my pains.
This is how it is difficult for me to perceive myself as alone in these moments or at all. While I also mostly just go on with my days as if in complete independence, it can be rather clear at times how much I rely on such an omnipresent saving grace. The moments of, "i can do this and I shall fight on" occur only after I am cognizant of the loving presence again. I would even go as far as saying that I do rely on such an experience of salvation.
As far as people-to-people interconnectivity is concerned, I think belief systems are a convenient commonality but hardly a barrier if most people respect the core importance of simply being different. There is beauty to different paths. We're all made differently after all. I am of the belief that even non-belief is a pathway to God if God is to be equated with goodness. That said, when a person aspires to live with a definition of growth that is aligned with goodness/being loving throughout all its facets, a person is in effect aspiring for godliness. By good, I do not mean absolute sainthood but simply of individuals who seek to live life respectfully as they are. Many subscribers to theism would argue against this but I simply cannot see an appropriately all-loving God to be so condemning of anything non-believing. Thus there must be a hierarchy to values enacted throughout life that are aligned with godliness that need not be particular to any religious or similar code.
Hmm...this is the notion of a sky God, I think. I do not claim to know God. I believe and think it is impossible for any individual to do so unless possibly dying or dead (if there even is a brain left to understand after death) but somehow I see God not as a gregarious presence but more gossamer or delicate or just entwined among the tapestry our beings. I think miracles happen somewhere there too. It's partly why I'm fascinated by the inexplicable aspects of biology. I feel like I can literally see God along veins of living things or something.
How about the evolution of primitive organisms into something that can question miracles? How about the discovery of penicillin? How about patients with terminal illnesses who survive for many more years in spite of all prognoses?
Here's the fundamental problem with debating God through the lens of New Atheism: in the spirit of Sagan's maxim "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", only two possible outcomes can happen when answering a challenge - i) The claim is deemed too ordinary, and subsequently labeled under 'nature' or 'science', or ii) The claim being so extraordinary that it's immediately dismissed for not being ordinary enough, that is, not being empirically verifiable. How in the world is then one supposed to prove any sort of 'godliness' when placed against impossible standards of a completely self-referential mentality which strips everything of all spiritual quality if it does pass its screening check, and categorically repudiates everything that doesn't? How does it make any sense to ask for a proof of the supernatural by obstinately demanding that people point at it in the realm of the natural?
While I find your post reasonable & I appreciate your insight, this & Thomas's rebuttal may be a topic for another thread.
I don't mean to speak for mintoots, but would like saving her some energy if she's feeling tired today. It's her final say either way.
D
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I used to be an atheist, until I had a 'religious experience' in which I felt the presence of 'God'. Or maybe I felt the presence of a large dose of neurochemicals, it scarcely seems to matter.
For me, this experience came at the end of a long (I mean, since I was old enough to think it) existential crisis in which I was possessed by the question, 'why does anything exist?'. The absurdity of existence terrified me, and shades of it still does.
I lacked the capacity to bring this question under the power of knowledge, or certainty; as, indeed, does everyone. What the 'religious experience' represented to me was, among other things, to be released from this striving after certainty - it meant that I could coexist with uncertainty; with 'mystery'. To me, then, 'God' is a shorthand for this sense; that there is some 'mystery' about existence that we could never know for sure about, and should not. It extends to spiritual instincts about connectedness; that 'wondering' we sometimes have about the uncanniness of certain outcomes - which we'll call 'fate' - or the strange sense of being connected to certain people on levels which transcend the physical or the immediately apprehensible.
I do not have an opinion, therefore, about the existence or otherwise of 'God'; I simply acknowledge the mystery and allow it to have space in my consciousness. I may pray, and engage in dialogue with 'God', but this doesn't represent something like 'faith', for me; it's almost a 'superpositional faith' - my sense of belief is in multiple states simultaneously, and none, or rather, One, since the mystery is the thing; is the 'object' itself. I do not have any sense of opposition to atheists, and in fact think of them as 'my people', just as I think of the sincerely religious as 'my people', too, though I'd strain to stress that this is not 'agnosticism'. The spiritual seems to move through everyone equally, and one cannot fail to notice the awe with which certain committed atheists (such as Dawkins) apprehend themselves in nature.
For me, this experience came at the end of a long (I mean, since I was old enough to think it) existential crisis in which I was possessed by the question, 'why does anything exist?'. The absurdity of existence terrified me, and shades of it still does.
I lacked the capacity to bring this question under the power of knowledge, or certainty; as, indeed, does everyone. What the 'religious experience' represented to me was, among other things, to be released from this striving after certainty - it meant that I could coexist with uncertainty; with 'mystery'. To me, then, 'God' is a shorthand for this sense; that there is some 'mystery' about existence that we could never know for sure about, and should not. It extends to spiritual instincts about connectedness; that 'wondering' we sometimes have about the uncanniness of certain outcomes - which we'll call 'fate' - or the strange sense of being connected to certain people on levels which transcend the physical or the immediately apprehensible.
I do not have an opinion, therefore, about the existence or otherwise of 'God'; I simply acknowledge the mystery and allow it to have space in my consciousness. I may pray, and engage in dialogue with 'God', but this doesn't represent something like 'faith', for me; it's almost a 'superpositional faith' - my sense of belief is in multiple states simultaneously, and none, or rather, One, since the mystery is the thing; is the 'object' itself. I do not have any sense of opposition to atheists, and in fact think of them as 'my people', just as I think of the sincerely religious as 'my people', too, though I'd strain to stress that this is not 'agnosticism'. The spiritual seems to move through everyone equally, and one cannot fail to notice the awe with which certain committed atheists (such as Dawkins) apprehend themselves in nature.
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I should like to say something specific about prayer. I started to pray relatively recently, perhaps at the end of 2018, but I've found that the 'exercise' (if we want to desacralise it like that) demands a mode of thought that is absolutely unselfish to an extreme degree; demands maximal engagement with the superego. It is simply not possible to 'pray' for 'wishes', or for any harm to come to anybody (though I never have this intent); indeed I am often possessed to pray for people who might consider themselves opposed to me. If I go in with the intent of 'wanting' something, I very quickly defer to some kind of cognition on a grander scale which changes the whole thought into something approximating 'what's best for everyone involved'; 'justice', 'rightness', &c. One simply cannot approach God with selfish intent, and the act of prayer can quickly reveal any that one might've had without realising it. This has extended to actively praying against my own interests (or suspecting that I would be). As a form of meditation, it's remarkably cleansing, and the 'higher power' seems critical to that.
Min, take your time. I don't think anyone here holds an expectation on you to respond in a specific timeframe or in a certain way. If they do, then that's on them. You take a great deal of care to respond, so it makes sense that you long to be as thorough as possible, and with thoughtfulness which is reminiscent of your nature. Your responses are always a gift of yourself, and you are appreciated more than you know.
This is very beautiful and moving.
Thank you Win3. I appreciate this. I hoped for this thread to reach out to the depths of how God is experienced among us and within us. While I see the value of discussing whether or not God truly exists, I echo that indeed it does not belong here. Tell us instead about why you do not need or do need God.
Wish I had answers. Just don’t have them. Is what it is.
Life is amazingly beautiful though