Berserk wrote on Apr 22^nd, 2007 at 12:11am:


Does not God talk to all devout christians, Don??...And why has not any of your brainwashed
crowd given us the whereabouts of Hoffa's body or medical breakthroughts???!!!! What has
your god told you lately? Any tips on the stock exchange? How about asking him who really
killed kennedy?...As usual the christian dictatorship's feedback from god is somewhere
between O and 1% ...Gman. ps. Has any passed saints given us any new scientific breakthroughs from the big boss above????

[Gman:] "Does not God talk to all devout christians, Don??...And why has not any of your brainwashed crowd given us the whereabouts of Hoffa's body?"
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Sensibly enough, the Bible never claims that we can identify God with the voice in the back of our head and converse with Him.  The Bible offers us 3 basic types of divine inspiration.  (1) Prophetic inspiration basically deals with this question: Do our external religious pretenses really relfect an inner spiritual  transformation?  If not, what must we do to make our spirituality real?  Even the prophetic word of knowledge deals with hidden spiritual conditions, not with the location of Jimmy Hoffa's corpse.   (2) The divine inspiration that derives from "the word of wisdom" is mediated through lessons learned in the school of hard knocks.   (3) God also speaks to us in the sense that He helps us apply His biblical messages to our experience.   In all cases, Christian claims of divine inspiration need to be subject to careful discernment from the corporate body of Christ and are inevitably interfused with very human interpretations that can lead to distortions.  In other words, unlike New Age kookery, Christian claims  of divine inspiration are ever cognizant of the potential for self-delusion.


[Gman:] "What has your god told you lately?"
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Two days ago, I felt the need to expose the absurdity of Alysia's claim that atheist Howard Storm was a dumb masochist who chose to go to Hell.   Just before I was about to post, I felt the impulse to turn on my TV.  There was Howard Storm discussing his NDE ordeal in Hell!  This was the first time I've ever heard him speak!

A couple of weeks prior, Roger (Rondele) posted on actor Telly Savalas's paranormal experience of being picked up on a rainy night and driven to a gas station.   He later learns that the driver had died in a car accident the previous year.  Telly is able to provide the driver's mother with awesome verifcations that the driver was indeed her son.  I was going to post my online reply about this, when I felt a strong impulse to turn on my TV.  The screen was immediately filled with Telly Savalas, an actor I haven't seen in many years since the Kojak series ended.

Is God speaking to me through such synchronicities?  Is God perhaps telling me that these paranormal experiences are genuine?   I must reply with the three words you rarely hear New Age Ghetlo members utter: "I don't know."  Perhaps.  

The one time God clearly spoke to me in my youth was an incident of intense spiritual ecstasy in an outdoor amphitheatre at a Christian camp.  I was initially by myself in the dark, but a crowd soon gathered because they saw my face glowing in the dark.  I asked them why they were there because their presence struck me as odd. And what did God say to me?  He told me that my theology was flawed, but that it was not in my best interests to have Him directly clear up my misunderstandings.  He implied that my instincts were good and that I needed to passionately live my burning questions and find my own answers that way.   By doing so, I had the chance to integrate my "answers" into a vibrant spirituality that made a difference and was more than a mere head trip.  In other words, despite the rich blessings my Pentecostal background had provided, God told me to leave my Christian Ghetto and seek out alternative intellectually respectable perspectives.  That divine edict prompted me to get my MDiv from Princeton and my doctorate from Harvard in Theology.  At the same time, I also immersed myself in New Age thought.  So when I press you to leave the New Age Ghetto and seek out challenging alternative perspectives, I speak from a personal sense of divine calling.

Don

DaBears,

My recommendation is that you read the book and report what your impressions. Everyone who reads the book will form an opinon of it from their nature. Take what you can from the book and disregard anything that does not ring true. By reading the book, any book, you are not saying that you agree with the author, but you may still find small pearls of wisdom in the words.

E.

recoverer wrote on Apr 20^th, 2007 at 7:09pm:


  Wow, didn't know all that about Yogananda.  I mostly enjoyed (but definitely did not agree with all of) his Autobiography of Yogi and assumed he was the real deal, though not a master or fully enlightened.  


  Do you know anything about Sri Aubinado?   A person whom i've clashed on the personality/ego level with a lot in this and other lives (it seems), spoke very highly of this particular teacher, but since he spoke highly of Alice Bailey and her teachings (enough to recommend them), i'm not to sure about his powers of discrimination to begin with.    

 From what little i do know of Sri A., he was supposedly involved with a group which condoned and perhaps practiced political violence before he became a guru type.   When i asked the above person of how could such a supposedly spiritually developed person partake of such things even into their mid 20's, and not know that was wrong on some level be on the same spiritual page as someone like Yeshua who knew such things seemingly pretty early on, i got silence.   Earlier he had said that not only did he consider Sri A. an incarnated Avatar but also one of the highest masters.   That's some pretty high praise there.

 My question is concerning these proclaimed enlightened ones, is why do all of them age and die?   From various psychic sources which i respect like some from TMI or Cayce, most of thesel indicate that a very intune, balanced and loving person will stop aging "normally", and an automatic revitalization of their body-physical starts to happen, hence they experience sickenss, disease, aging, etc. less and less and radiant, vibrant health more and more.  If they get intune enough like Yeshua, they will trancend physical death completely and be in this world but not of it, so to speak.  

  Anyways, thanks for the eye-opener concerning Yogananda, it was somewhat disillusioning but necessary.   Thankfully though, i never got to much into him other than reading that one book and thinking he was probably much more intune than the average person.  

 Stuff like this, shows how important discrimination  and balancing the right brain with the left brain is.  

recoverer,

First, let me say that this post comes after the previous post and the flavor of it is somewhat different. I feel it as different, because in this post, you come across as a person speaking from experience and it shines through with its own conveyance of truth.

I understand your experience and I can only infer that you wished someone had told you then what you know now, which is what you wished to accomplish. Did the experience make you a bad person? A better one? The event and the people are secondary to what you obtained as a result of that experience. I, too, have experiences that I would love to prevent others from going through, but it is not my place. I know, without doubt, that there is a reason for it.  

Do I believe that everyone works for the betterment of others? No. Do I believe that there is a reason for what happens. Yes. From what I can ascertain of your post, you retained your ability to reason rather than following blindly in the footsteps of another. I do not blind following, but encourage experience and a healthy dose of intellectual curiosity. I am a living, breathing creature, born from light to which I will eventually return. I speak only from my experience, because it is my truth. It is not the only truth, because by its nature a truth can never be untrue.

For what it is worth, I had a similar experience with the cheating scenario, but the sexes were reversed.

I understand the why of your caveats on sources of material; however, what is the personal responsibility of those who allow themselves to be swept away by gurus? Not one channeled source of material, not even my higher self, has ever stated that I should follow their way. If anything, I have been forced to work harder to learn to reason and to draw from them what rings true for me and to disregard other material.

My recommendation of this book did not come with a "This is the way." but only "I recommend you read it." Only by reading it, does one gain a personal perspective that they can share, an experience they can offer, much like your experiences with gurus. Once experienced, in whatever form, it can be discussed, which is what forms the basis of this forum.

Thank you for sharing.

E.

good for you Alex! read everything you can get your hands on and own yourself!
the power is within to listen to your guidance of what rings true in the heart.
if you ever get an uneasy feeling when you are reading something, you might want to listen to what your feelings are telling you and read something else. If on the other hand you are connecting with the material and your mind and heart are resonating in joy to it, I'd go with that.  theres a book for everyone out there no matter what part of the path home they are on and we don't all read or support the same books as you may have noticed!

Thanks for your post EE. I like the way you communicate yourself. love, alysia

Yo Alex,

you also promised you were going to read Malachi Martin's "Hostage to the Devil" and Johanna Michaelson's "The Beautiful Side of Evil"  (2 books not recommended by the New Age Ghetto).  Were you just lying or are you sitll planning to keep your promise in your own good time?

Don the Nagger