Oh Don, How I have missed your opinions. The fact that you dismiss what you call "new age view of God" truly shows how closed minded your religious beliefs must be. Or am I just reading you all wrong? Is what you are trying to say is that your beliefs are closer to the truth than mine? You belief in God stronger? Your choices better? Well then you should have your own church so that you have the opportunity to gather as many sheep as you can to follow you to your heaven. Perhaps I will see you there when I pass through F25. Oh yes, you do have the church of Don don't you? Perhaps Don, we are both right. Perhaps I am a reflection of God. No less, no more. Perhaps God is an just as you place him/her, above all others and everything. Perhaps, just perhaps, there is your God and there is also my God. By the way can you say "Christian fundamentalist"?

Hello Alan,

I am happy that we can share opinions here.

Alan McDougall wrote on Sep 3^rd, 2008 at 7:46pm:


QUOTING ALAN:
God could give us all knowledge just as you stated but he will not do so until he is sure we can handle it correctly, don’t you agree?

Yes, I agree that I believe God could give us all knowledge, BUT I don't think he checks whether we can handle it correctly. I think he would prefer that we would handle it correctly, unfortunately, the choice is not upto him. If he could always be sure that we could handle everything, I think there would be no murder, no suicide, no theft,... to summarize there wouldn't be no crime, nor hurt.

If supposedly, we are parts of God that don't know themselves, we suffer the consequences of our ignorance in our actions. Ignorance leads to mistakes. Human mistakes, by definition, are contrario to the nature of the soul, which is to be loving and bring happiness and good. The contrary of love, good and happiness, etc. IS hatred, war, evil and suffering, etc.

Quoting myself:
If supposedly, we are parts of God that don't know themselves, we suffer the consequences of our ignorance in our actions.

If we are probes of curiosity, there must be something to be curious about. Curiosity is a result of lack of knowledge about a certain matter. Lack of knowledge = ignorance.

QUOTING ALAN:
And you make a very valid point about God evolving. As the creator he must be evolving with his creation

Actually, I am not as sure about that as I seem to be. How do you define evolution. Evolution means change. Suppose you would master PUL at the highest level (like God for example). You can only learn to master it even better by watching others make mistakes, but in fact in essence you already ARE PUL. Evolving and learning to practice a craft better you already know is a different thing to me.

QUOTING ALAN:
Like I stated in my reply to Don , we are made from "GODSTUFF" but separated as sentient beings who love and adore him as mother and father of everything

I believe we adore him, because he IS what we want and need AND because we lack it here.

I believe that God is asked a lot (In prayers, we ask him to get this, to get that, etc.), but how many of us wonder if God feels loved, if he feels happy. How many of us, give him something spiritually by free will, other than what he learns from us by hearing our thoughts (since he must be a gifted psychic, I believe) and through compassion for our state.

If we really adored him the way we should, we would all create a world in accordance to our real nature: which is our will to be happy, good and loving.

Instead, society just most often reaches for the first thing listed: happiness for itself, not looking at the damage it makes, creating that happiness. You start to be good, when you start to act lovingly, on the whole line. This means, when you start to create happiness for EVERYBODY and not just an small elite. Society, as a whole, has not learned that yet.

QUOTING ALAN:
God to me is the primordial mind, the Fist Thinker he that perceives and creates

I would like to nuance my point of view. I believe creation is a partnership:

God first thinks of a model (like Earth-Life System) to generate a certain type of experience. Then souls choose to enter that reality and modify it again, through there believes. We are as much responsible of our evolution as is God.

I think that, no matter how much suffering we create, one day we will we forced to get rid of wrong believe-patterns (and behaviors due to that). BUT for the moment, when society changes a pattern, it is mostly not out of LOVE, but out of necessity (to avoid a war, to get the economy better, to improve diplomacy, etc...) but too often not for the people.

The system gets more support than the people who are part of that system. The reason for that is, that the system is exploited by people who need that system, to match their believes (eg. a famous politician needs to keep his power, to gain more money and power. When he has power he feels safe and can give himself the illusion he is loved, because he feels needed. This means he will support this system, to create his happiness. Companies support him, because he will help them vote laws that will be good for their company. The chief of the company needs that to earn a lot of money to buy a yacht, a house, school for his daughter, to please his wife with diamonds. His wife needs diamonds to impress the jetset. Her daughter needs the jetset to become a famous actress. She wants to be adored for her talents as an actress, etc...and because she feels unloved because her father is constantly working and having dinner with famous politicians. Etc...)

The system is not God's will, but a combination of consequences of choices, which have consequences, etc....like a stone thrown in the water, you see the waves expand.

We might be expansions of God, until we've fulfilled our curiosity.


OTHER THINGS:
I think there are as many realms in God's world as their are beliefs and ways of being.

There are realms for people who do not believe in God, but does it proove God does not exist?

God does not dictate what to believe, he leaves it upto us to discover our nature through experience. God can be a place, a soul, etc.

The concept of God has become so high, we've lost touch with it. I think we shouldn't put that concept on some kind of pedestal, or believe 1 religion or belief knows the truth about it.

When you see somebody and you think you love that person: is it the truth OR a point of view OR both.

Why wouldn't God be like that, the point of view we want to be truth, because we need it.

The essence of God is maybe not his knowledge, the place he lives or the kind of soul/energy he is. The essence of God that matters to us, would rather be the STATE OF BEING he has achieved, and which we are seeking to KNOW.

Would one care about God, if one reached the final/ultimate state of happiness, bliss, knowing, loving, etc ? Would GOD still be the 1 thing we seek and worship and put on a pedestal ?

I think, God matters to us, because he is a symbol of what we try to achieve ourselves.

God symbolizes a quest of our own, and many --I believe -- seek to KNOW him, to improve their own path, but maybe nobody walks the same path in life and maybe HE is the one that already made his harsh trip to knowledge (What do we know, of what he went through?) and KNOWS that nobody can help you on that trip, just as nobody can be in YOUR position, or have YOUR feelings and thoughts.

That is what makes us unique, each one of us. That is what makes us alone, but also a defined part of a greater whole, that we named God.

Of course, that is all a belief/thought of mine, but I like to share it.

Sonia

Alan,

Yes, your last post is on the right track.  The strength of claiming that God is the ground of being rather than a particular being is this: it holds the key to the mind-numbing question, "Why is there something rather than nothing at all?"  The weakness of this claim is our inability to explain exactly what it means to say that the ground of all being is neither a particular being nor All That Is.  Perhaps the right question at this point is this: How can Divine Mind transcend time and space?  We can't imagine a particular being existing without imagining it as enduring.  If it endures, it must endure through time to some extent.  So if it is truly timeless, then it cannot "endure" at all and hence cannot even "exist" in any meaningful sense of that word.  It's as if Divine Mind has an infinite number of creative thoughts, each of which is timeless, has nor duration, and hence does not exist, but rather grounds all existence in the sense that divine thoughts can manifest as particular enduring realities!  But now I'm talking way over my head!  

Don