Hiding From God

[Michael]

Do we create religions in order to hide from God/enlightenment/union/?

[scameter]

I don't think so. I think that such a thing could possibly be seen as being so that the dogma of religions allows us to hide from God/enlightenment, but I think this is an incorrect viewpoint. People use dogma in religions in order to make themselves look important and loyal to their spiritual beliefs, if indeed they have any, and if they don't, to make themselves appear as if they do.

[Sersta]

Hi I do not think that humans discovered / invented / or received from on high religion to hide from God or enlightenment. I dare say just the opposite. Although I would argue strongly that historically we have decided to organize, manage, and manipulate religion in such a way that God and enlightenment ended up being actively hidden from the masses/ followers. Not citing any examples but there are many that fit that bill. Not necessarily in doctrine, but certainly in practice.

[scameter]

I agree, unfortunately. And I think that is largely due to the dogma or organized religions causing their vision to be limited by their rituals of any other religion. I think that religion should be a global, entire societal effort to interpret and understand religious truth, with no bounds. I think different religions should exist, but only insofar as they have been differentiated culturally. Now, as globalization is so close and peoples can communicate so easily, especially over the internet, I think every person in the world should be able to participate in religious discussion and study of all religious truth, including that which is considered mythological, and not to the exclusion of any possible benefits from science, history and philosophy.

[venom mama]

no

why hide from our creator

faith is beautiful


just watch the sunset


or a rainbow after the storm


or feel a baby kicking in your belly


god is good

[Thomas Knierim]

venomgirl: the sunset...a rainbow... the storm... a baby kicking...

Only none of these things have anything to do with faith. They are just as beautiful with or without faith.

Cheers, Thomas

[scameter]

And yet their experience can be broadened by faith and spiritual belief.

[...]

Do we create religions in order to hide from God/enlightenment/union/?

..no, we created religion/god/enlightenment to hide from the fact that death is the end of it all...

[Thomas Knierim]

scam: And yet their experience can be broadened by faith and spiritual belief.

The experience of natural phenomena, such as the ones mentioned by venomgirl, are more likely to be narrowed by faith issues, rather than broadened. Faith doesn't care to explain, it doesn't ask questions, and sometimes it doesn't even allow questions.

Take the rainbow as an example. Who hasn't marvelled at this beautiful phenomenon? The ancient Chinese believed that the rainbow was a slit in the sky sealed by the gods with stones of different colours.

Well, that's an explanation. But it leaves open a lot of questions. Why does the sky have slits, for example? What stones? Why did the gods have to seal it? And so on.

What is probably worse is that this sort of faith-based explanation doesn't lead to an understanding of nature. How can it then lead to an appreciation of nature? Can you appreciate something that you don't understand?

Well yes, in a sense you can. You can appreciate the beauty of the phenomenon with child-like wonder. You can see it from a naive point of view, undertstand it as the work of a goddess or a fairy. But this is not what I would call "broadening" the experience.

The experience can be broadened only by real understanding. When Descartes and later Newton came up with the scientific explanation of the rainbow, then and only then there was a real understanding and a real broadening.

The rainbow tells us something about the nature of light, which is far more wonderful and enthralling than any fairy or goddess.

Cheers, Thomas

[CSwriter1]

Thomas, I thought the rainbow is the sign of God's covent with the Jews. :)

[CSwriter1]

When we can identify ourselves with the cosmos, we can feel lifted above the pain and suffering of this life.
It can be pleasant to believe this life is a delusion and what happens here doesn't really matter, because this isn't real. What is real is a perfection without suffering.

I don't see how this would have anything to do with hiding from God. I thought the rituals that have been practiced thoughout time, were about connecting with God/cosmos. People have fasted, have subjected themselves to physical stress, or meditated, or burned candles and insense and said incantations to become one with the God/cosmos. It is done with a hope of intuitive knowledge of God/comos, and people have had some interesting experiences.

[...]

It can be pleasant to believe this life is a delusion and what happens here doesn't really matter, because this isn't real. What is real is a perfection without suffering.

..and that is exactly the reason for much, much suffering CS. It is the vilest perversion of irresponsible dogma around, and it lies at the heart of all that is wrong with religion. Just for this monumental lie alone, religion ought to be abolished. Let people face life for what it is, a one time deal, instead of patronizing them...

[CSwriter1]

Let people face life for what it is, a one time deal, instead of patronizing them...

I am not sure this is so. I think we have plenty of reasons to trust Egyptian theology of the body, soul and spirit, might be the truth. There is evidence of this around the world, and I fail to see any reason why this belief would be harmful. Except that I also like the idea that what I do here matters.

Keep in mind some of believe we may have lived before. My sense of past incarnations, contributes to my sense of purpose this time.

[CSwriter1]

Do we create religions in order to hide from God/enlightenment/union/?

Christianity seems to do this and perhaps Islam too, because it is part of the same religion, but yoga and Hinduism encourage enlightenment.

[...]

I am not sure this is so. I think we have plenty of reasons to trust Egyptian theology of the body, soul and spirit, might be the truth. There is evidence of this around the world, and I fail to see any reason why this belief would be harmful. Except that I also like the idea that what I do here matters.

Keep in mind some of believe we may have lived before. My sense of past incarnations, contributes to my sense of purpose this time.

..current religious turmoil is based on the notion that this reality is nothing to live for, but our reward is in the afterlife, spending rest of eternity with 72 virgins or at the side of Jesus. In the minds of alot of people, this reality is not worth living, and that gives rise to so much suffering. You might have a broader belief in regards to purpose and meaning, but for the more impressionable the view of heaven and how to get there is a very narrow one. How can you hide from something that isn't there?

[Michael]

This discussion seems to have drifted off the point somewhat. Perhaps this will help focus peoples' minds on the question in subject.

The Hound of Heaven

By Francis Thomson

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat -- and a voice beat
More instant than the Feet --
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."

I pleaded, outlaw-wise,
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
Trellised with intertwining charities;
(For, though I knew His love Who followèd,
Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.)
But, if one little casement parted wide,
The gust of his approach would clash it to :
Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars ;
Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon.
I said to Dawn : Be sudden -- to Eve : Be soon ;
With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over
From this tremendous Lover--
Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see !
I tempted all His servitors, but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him their fickleness to me,
Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue ;
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long savannahs of the blue ;
Or whether, Thunder-driven,
They clanged his chariot 'thwart a heaven,
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet :--
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat--
"Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me."

I sought no more that after which I strayed,
In face of man or maid ;
But still within the little children's eyes
Seems something, something that replies,
They at least are for me, surely for me !
I turned me to them very wistfully ;
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair
With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
"Come then, ye other children, Nature's -- share
With me" (said I) "your delicate fellowship ;
Let me greet you lip to lip,
Let me twine with you caresses,
Wantoning
With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses,
Banqueting
With her in her wind-walled palace,
Underneath her azured daïs,
Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
From a chalice
Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring."
So it was done :
I in their delicate fellowship was one --
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies.
I knew all the swift importings
On the wilful face of skies ;
I knew how the clouds arise
Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings ;
All that's born or dies
Rose and drooped with ; made them shapers
Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine ;
With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day's dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning's eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
Heaven and I wept together,
And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine ;
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart
I laid my own to beat,
And share commingling heat ;
But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.
For ah ! we know not what each other says,
These things and I ; in sound I speak--
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth ;
Let her, if she would owe me,
Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me
The breasts o' her tenderness ;
Never did any milk of hers once bless
My thirsting mouth.
Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
With unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy ;
And past those noisèd Feet
A Voice comes yet more fleet --
"Lo ! naught contents thee, who content'st not Me."

Naked I wait thy Love's uplifted stroke !
My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,
And smitten me to my knee ;
I am defenceless utterly.
I slept, methinks, and woke,
And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me ; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years --
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.
Yea, faileth now even dream
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist ;
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding ; cords of all too weak account
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.
Ah ! is Thy love indeed
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount ?
Ah ! must --
Designer infinite !--
Ah ! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it ?
My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust ;
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver
Upon the sighful branches of my mind.
Such is ; what is to be ?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind ?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds ;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity ;
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again.
But not ere him who summoneth
I first have seen, enwound
With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned ;
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether man's heart or life it be which yields
Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields
Be dunged with rotten death ?

Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at hand the bruit ;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea :
"And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard ?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest me !
"Strange, piteous, futile thing !
Wherefore should any set thee love apart ?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught" (He said),
"And human love needs human meriting :
How hast thou merited --
Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot ?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art !
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me ?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home :
Rise, clasp My hand, and come !"
Halts by me that footfall :
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly ?
"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest !
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest me."

[Orlando]

An experience can only be broadened by experiencing more of the experience

[Orlando]

more in depth

[______]

Somewhere--in this forum or perhaps another--I read that one's interpretation of God was that God was truly love--or something along that line of thought. If this is the case, then one cannot escape "God" because one always has the capacity to love.
But can "God" escape us?

[...]

..how can you escape an idea if you don't want too? How can an idea hold power over you if you aren't granting it power? Again, how can you hide from something that isn't there?

[redraven]

I agree that we create these fantastic visions of perfection to hide from death. At times, and this is almost Zen, but likely existentialist in a way too, I figure that one only is born, attains consciousness because of biology, and then dies and evaporates, all for no apparent reason. Unlike many people, this thought doesn't depress me, because life has meaning while I'm alive.

Thomas: Don't you think that childlike wonder, without faith, has its place? When I am relaxing from work, and I don't need Newton, is it ok to look at a picture without wondering how it was done? I don't think that you mean it doesn't, just that it isn't where all of our efforts should be focused. I'm curious...

[______]

Originally posted by @--
I'm curious...
Stay that way!!! :thumbsup: