Realities Of The Divine

Discussion in 'Philosophy and Religion' started by Perfect Disorder, May 5, 2016.

  1. Mountain Valley Wolf

    Mountain Valley Wolf Senior Member

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    Kind of like the book Supernature, if I recall... Well----not excactly, but you know what I mean...
     
  2. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    Supernatural is a meaningless term to me. A term that simply means that we don't yet understand the mechanism of the occurrence.
    If it occurs it is natural.
     
  3. NoxiousGas

    NoxiousGas Old Fart

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    One needs to first determine if they feel God is "supernatural" or "supranatural".

    a supernatural God would conform to all the laws of nature, but possess ability and characteristics beyond our ability and understanding.
    a supranatural God would not be bound by anything in our known universe and would be separate and apart from it.

    to frame it in a Christian context;
    Jesus is supernatural
    God is supranatural
     
  4. Perfect Disorder

    Perfect Disorder Paradoxically Spontaneous

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    Personally I do not believe in gods. To be more exact I see them as manifestations of an all encompassing nameless, thoughtless, essenceless force. To use your terms stated above I would say that this force is both supernatural and supranatural having given rise to all things, being all things and yet separate from all things.
     
  5. Mountain Valley Wolf

    Mountain Valley Wolf Senior Member

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    Hi, sorry, I got real busy and was unable to repsond right away, but I hoped my other responces might answer how I feel about form.


    I heard stories of miracles but never experienced one growing up in a church. At 8 years old, in a baptismal class, I was already having trouble with the repressive ego-ideal seeking nature of the religion. In fact, I said to the teacher, "Look Daddy-o, you are just forcing me to conform to conservative cultural mores that Society as a whole is giving up on, and if I give in I will be nothing more than another repressed xenophobic individual seeing darkness in every corner, man! No one acts so perfect as their own ego-ideal tries to make them to be!" The other 8 year olds just looked at me, speechless, but I just folded my arms and wanted to light up a cigarette. (Ok---I made that part up, I never said that, but seriously, I was beginning to have trouble with religion as I said.) I expected something amazing to happen on my baptism, nothing did. At 10, my mom caught me bowing down to a little buddha statue in our garden. I very sincerely answered her, "I wanted to see what would happen." a decade later and I traveled half way around the world looking for truth, and a place to belong spiritually. I never saw a miracle in organized religion, never became enlightened. I saw some amazing demonstrations of the power of Chi. I heard stories and so forth, but at that time in my life I never experienced anything that could definitely be considered a miracle, and gave up on religion.

    What kind of miracles did you witness and what denominations did it occur in? I have read work of an anthropoologist that studied the spiritual experience within one of the charismatic denominations where they talk in tongues and so forth.





    My experience on the Red Road consists of amazing things on an individual basis, in small groups, and in large groups. The thing that put me onto this path---the strange mental breakdown of my stepdaughter after her biological father's death (who she hardly knew) was something that affected only her. Then the peasant farmer that healed her in less than a minute ocurred with only him, my wife, and I present---basically we went into a stream and poured water on her, then he bent down and either said something, or blew, into her ear---all of a sudden she looked up and said, "Mama where am I?"

    I think you might recall some of the things that have happened to me---and I was all alone.



    As MeAgain pointed out, if reality is formless, than it would have no shape (I'm paraphrasing--I think you know what I mean). I think that as form, you are referring as I do, to the essence which gives rise to physicality, MeAgain, to put words in his mouth, was somewhere more along the lines of Sartre in that the form and essence is already within the appearance, i.e. that there is no metaphysical beingness that gives rise to the shape of physical objects.

    I say that there is form---the Tao that cannot be spoken is physicality as it normally happens---the probability wave built into the probability waves that collapse into physical particles. Unlike traditional essentialism however, I posit that it is all mind, and where it is sentient, there is potentiality. This is where will comes into play, or where reality becomes fluid and malleable.
     
  6. Mountain Valley Wolf

    Mountain Valley Wolf Senior Member

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    Taoism of the masses does have many gods, and the ancestors as well have a place.
     
  7. Perfect Disorder

    Perfect Disorder Paradoxically Spontaneous

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    The first miracle I witnessed was at a nondenominational get together. A man that my father had known for many years. His right leg was about two inches shorter than his left but the preacher laid hands on him and while the whole assembly prayed it grew out. The second was a girl at our church. She was really sick though I know not what ailed her. Dad took her to a Pentecostal friend and we saw her healed there at his church. As to your experiences I stated the last sentence of that previous post because I have since seen singular and small group phenomena.

    To be precise I believe all gods exist but only so long as people believe in them. Also I follow my own Way and while it does draw from mass Taoism it also takes from many other beliefs as well. In fact I just started studying Buddhism .
     
  8. Mountain Valley Wolf

    Mountain Valley Wolf Senior Member

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    Pentecostal---that was what the anthropologist was studying.

    The Native American God is kind of what you talk about----the Great Mystery.
     
  9. Perfect Disorder

    Perfect Disorder Paradoxically Spontaneous

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    I have yet to study Native beliefs but it will come eventually
     

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