busmaster11: Moonbeam... You talk about owning the universe, being one with the universe... tea... how everything's perfect... you've lost me in so many places... But I don't get how I'm creating this "ego life" thing. Let's be clear though... I don't see myself as being better than anyone. At least, I know on any relevant level I have no reason to. If there's one area where I hope God might grant me grace, is that He has shown me through the Bible what a profound sinner I am. All I want to do here, is help others see the same thing no matter the profanity thrown my way.
OK perhaps you do want to hear more so I will try again:
Truth is a paradox that can only resolve at a higher level of understanding. What does this mean. One thing it means is that truth is not a string of words you can encapsulate or convey with words alone. It is an insight that turns our normal perspective on its head. It is confusing because it can't be grasped by thought. It is a state of consciousness I could call being awake. It is a revelation that can't be demanded. It is grace, a different grace, I think, than you describe above.
Let's look at the problem of evil. How can there be a perfect God with infinite powers and there still be evil. How could a Good God create evil? You would say, I think, that the Devil or some such thing created evil and God gave man free choice to chose good or evil. But to use your words, only a fool would chose evil. It would be just like you suddenly choosing to shot somebody and send your soul to hell. Not going to happen by choice.
But there is another way to look at this from my point of view. An ape with mammalian care for its children evolved with great intelligence and empathy over millions of years, an ape that laughs and loves, loves life itself, and that ape developed the trick of language.
Without language one cannot think, one has no words. Without words consciousness is filled with perception and feeling. The natural state of man is that he can feel and what he sees and feels is all there is. He is perfect because he is all that he can be and he can love infinitely because there is no separation between what he feels and what he is. And he is perfect in that he has no self reproach. He can't be neurotic and he can't put himself down. He has no self because he has no concept of boundary. The universe happens in his head. He is fully here in the present. He can't analyze because he has no words to put to thought. This is the Garden of Eden and the state of conscious into which we were born. We were born with a capacity for joy.
But we also evolved to speak a language, a system of symbols that represent reality but are not reality itself and which can express realities that do not exist.
We feel pain and we feel pleasure and from this good and evil were born. And then we turned these words on ourself. We called others good and evil, this action good and that one bad etc. And so evil was born with the capacity to think, to analyze and to pretend. We removed ourselves via thought from the now. We divided into the thinker and the object of thought. And we were told that we were evil and were punished for it. But no child can bare the feeling he is worthless and evil. He puts his real self to sleep and becomes an ego, a proud representation of what he was taught is the good. We learn cunning and denial, how to pretend we don't feel what we really feel. We became, evangelists for the good, believers in the one and only truth, any one of millions of them.
We have expelled ourselves from the garden of Eden, but the residual memory that we were once perfect remains. But because we now feel ourselves to be worthless we project that perfection out there and call it God. So be it. At least the perfection is real.
So we can have two states of being. We can think and have an ego or because of a deep longing for perfection or a deep interest in truth, we can set out on a journey for the source of our feeling of separation and end duality. There are many ways it is done, but it can't be done by the ego. The ego will not die of its own volition. Perhaps a temple bell rings when you are in a deep state of meditation and bam, you wake up filled with nothing but the love of awareness or you disappear in a longing for Christ. The Muslim reminds himself over and over not to react with negativity because everything that happens is the Will of God. Everything happens for a purpose. It's a big flash when the mind slips past the ego. That allows the original self to awaken.
And all this is just words about a state of being not the state of being.
So in my opinion Jesus brought forgiveness not so you could see how evil you are but so you could forget about the notion of sin entirely and see how fucked up everything is when you believe in it. There is no sin. There never was and there never will be. It is an illusion beaten into us because we use words for things that don't exist and pound that illusion in with a stick. Self hate is deeply buried and it is few who really feel forgiven.
There is no good or evil. There is no morality. There is only love that is being. We were created in the image of God and God is perfection, or we created Him in our image. Nobody can know nor does it matter. Created or creator, God is real. God is Love.[/QUOTE]In short, people are born good.
There is no, people are born sinners, but for Religion.
The only people that attack us on Morality issues, are the Religious or the Government.
-John