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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 2/3/2007 7:00 AM (GMT -6) |   | Ok. Let's talk about an interesting idea.
Paul said:
"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."
Ok...
Now...
Is it possible for someone to SO SURRENDER their will to God's subjective aims at ALL TIMES that the sense of ego "I-ness" is completely broken down such that one does NOT perceive separateness from God's Spirit within them? Could this utter surrender of one's will unto God's will at all times make it possible for someone to see themselves as IDENTIFIABLE with the great "I Am?
This is NOT, of course, to say that contingent existence that comes from God's energies are IDENTICAL to Necessary Existence. What it is to say is that in realizing the truth of panentheism, one believes that they are UNCHANGABLY ONE with God at all times.
A person who wholeheartedly believed this would believe that they are ONE with God...God actualizing His will through his "god" (God's Image)
They would have the internal experience like "God and I are completely one." or "My Father and I are completely one." or "Christ and I are completely one." Moreover, they would understand that ALL THINGS are in and of God...therefore they would see God in all things...and dedicate everything in their lives (eating, drinking, going to the bathroom, sex, etc) to God in the most unifying way possible for them.
Moreover, I could see this person completely thinking of themselves and their spheres of influence as STEWARDSHIPS. They wouldn't feel that they "own" ANYTHING...not even their own bodies. Everything would be FROM, BY, and FOR God. They wouldn't feel the threat or devalue of LOSS or the sense of pride from GAIN...but would just know that what is, is...and that God is always working in and around them.
Is this the END that Christianity is genuinely about?
To glorify God and enjoy Him forever?
To experience THEOSIS and UNITY with God?
To become lights of PERFECT LOVE?
It seems like it to me. It's a new way of thinking...but it seems biblical consistent to me. It's "mystical" as all get out...but it seems to be what things are going towards. But looking at this, I can see a person living like this getting TREMENDOUSLY JUDGED by others. Tremendously. Not looking forward to that crap. Alas, that's the way of the world. 
At any rate, the main question is this:
Do you feel it's possible to "extinguish" our sense of "I-ness" such that we don't REALLY think in POSSESSIVE terms of "my" and "mine" or EGOIC terms like "I" and "me"...but that we just think of ourselves as vessels of contingent expression that God is living HIS life within at all moments?
Thoughts?
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 2/3/2007 8:05 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 2/3/2007 8:13 AM (GMT -6) | | Breaking some of this down.
This is all just a logical extension of a metaphysical belief that human beings are NOT EQUIVALENT to their thoughts and feelings. They are centers of CONSCIOUSNESS who experience thoughts and feelings. And that means that we can NAVIGATE our thoughts and feelings such that we never fall into DESPAIR, but always stay in a constant awareness of and empowerment by God. This is called "God-consciousness." We don't have to let the situations of this transitory life drag us EMOTIONALLY up and down...tossed TO and FRO with every little wind of doctrine and thangs. We can HIDE in the shadow of God's wings...rest transparently in the Power that created and sustains us!
A person who lives in this understanding of perspectival sociality doesn't have their inner peace and tranquility of being ONE with God disturbed at all, either by any form of pleasure or any form of pain.
They are IN the world...but definitely not OF the world.
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."
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Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 2/5/2007 8:31 AM (GMT -6) | | |
Exousia: A person who lives in this understanding of perspectival sociality doesn't have their inner peace and tranquility of being ONE with God disturbed at all, either by any form of pleasure or any form of pain.
They are IN the world...but definitely not OF the world.
Jeff: I totally agree. There is a specific kind of peace that can be complete even in great suffering and turmoil. It's the one you describe. But part of what makes that peace experienceable is what we know the future will be like. Christ endured IN PEACE for the the joy set before him in time. Same with the Father. The Father is totally competent to attain the end of creation, so He has no doubt that His sufferings are not in vain. So no temporal suffering can affect that kind of peace that He has. But suffering is suffering for creature AND creator, alike. Peace, even for God, does not mean God doesn't suffer, to my mind. Indeed, perfect love SUFFERS LONG.
In short, complete unity with God is worthless if there is nothing in the future that renders current suffering worth it. This is the message of the bible from Genesis to Revelation. It also seems very common-sensical to me. It is based on the fundamental fact that sentient beings are motivated by sentient states. For rational sentient beings, that entails an evaluation of the relative worth that potential, future sentient states will/might have. As Christ said, no rational man goes to battle without counting the cost. Peace that we have in this world is the peace of knowing the cost is WELL worth it.
To posit that the persons of the godhead were experiencing undiminished intensity of sentient satisfaction while the Son, in human form, was experiencing a significantly diminished intensity of sentient satisfaction seems to be purely mystical. It seems to imply that the Son could be for all practical purposes two different persons at once. This is so since such a state of affairs entails TWO states of consciousness--which seems to imply the existence of two conscious egos for only one person.
So why posit it all. It's no less mysterious than just saying God has the capacity to have the intensity of His sentient satisfaction diminished for finite periods of time so long as He knows it's worth it. This latter is something we have an analogy for. We have no analogy of a single, conscious ego simultaneously consciously and separately experiencing two different sentient states. It seems like a contradiction. Why not cut it off with Occam's razor? What does it buy us?
I guess what I'm saying is this: There are things about God that we posit that are mysterious--i.e., inexplicable. But they must necessarily be posited to ACCOUNT for our own experience. But these kind of mysteries do not entail a contradiction. There are other mysteries that DO entail a contradiction. The two conscious existence(s?) of the Son seems like a contradiction given how we normally define person. We can say that the Son is a person in a mode we have no analogy for. Fine, then why pretend we can explain it in words at all. How does that account for anything that needs accounting for? It seems both superfluous and inexplicable to say that the Son is a person in a way that our definition of person can't touch.
E.g., God knows things by modes of apprehension I have no analogy for. But the thing is, I MUST posit those modes of apprehension to even account for reality as I understand it. They are mystical, but they don't contradict anything I know. Indeed, my knowledge is only knowledge IF God has such mystical modes of apprehension. But the two-conscious existence of the Son doesn't account for anything necessary to explain what I know. It just contradicts how I normally define person. I can't see what it buys me at all.
Post Edited (jefscott) : 2/5/2007 8:09:21 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 2/5/2007 9:51 AM (GMT -6) | | I think that I hear what you are saying, Jeff.
Personally, I would think that true PEACE is found in God's empowering presence alone. Nothing else. Nothing more. Yes, count-costing is rational behaviour. Even completely unspiritual people do that. But the PEACE of God is found in knowing God's presence AT EVERY MOMENT. And unspiritual people definitely can't do that.
Let me put it like this. Let's say that you have conditioned yourself to feel joy at breathing. That you actually sense a presence of the Divine with every conscious breath that you take...or every breath that you make yourself aware of. Let's further say that this joy constitutes your inner emotional state AT ALL TIMES YOU BREATHE. So, if you experience either pleasure or pain, happiness or suffering, you are ALWAYS joyful...simply because you are reminded that the Divine is IN and AROUND you at all times.
Once a person understands that it is IMPOSSIBLE for them to be separated from the Love of God at any time for any reason...then there is fearlessness and peace. All suffering is relativized by this truth.
To me, there is only one reason that makes anything...absolutely ANYTHING..."worth it": God's presence in the PRESENT MOMENT...because life is only a seriers of present moments anyway. That is what I believe to be the Absolute: God's Holy Presence in every nanosecond in existence. It is only by God's empowering presence that BEING and BECOMING even EXIST! God's spirit is the spirit of POWER, FREEDOM, and LOVE. This is why, I would wager, God separated the Levites out from the other Israelite tribes telling them that they had the BEST allocation of all: God himself!
Moreover,
God "suffers" in Jesus, but that suffering is RELATIVIZED to the complete satisfaction that God has in Himself. To say otherwise is to tacitly deny all the implications of divine aseity. Are you willing to say that there was a point at which God's complete aesthetic satisfaction in Godself was fundamentally DISRUPTED by Jesus's suffering on earth? Just wondering.
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."
Post Edited (Exousia) : 2/5/2007 8:56:00 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 2/5/2007 9:57 AM (GMT -6) | | An old song we used to sing at my old Baptist church...
Because He lives
I can face tomorrow
Because He lives
All fear is gone.
Because I know
He holds the future
And life is worth the living just
because He lives.
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 2/5/2007 10:00 AM (GMT -6) | | Exousia: God "suffers" in Jesus, but that suffering is RELATIVIZED to the complete satisfaction that God has in Himself. To say otherwise is to tacitly deny all the implications of divine aseity.
Tom: I put Jeff onto a used copy of Greg's thesis that amazon is selling for $27! It'll get him into Greg's arguments. But we may need to have another walk-through on aseity Exousia. I was mentioning to Jeff the other day that God, as a necessary being, has to have SOME necessary attributes, necessarily instantiated, and SOME contingent attributes. Jeff is thinking that God's satisfaction from or sense of relational fulfillment can be temporarily lessened during the time of the creational project. But that would make it a contingent attribute. So the question is, why is unsurpassable satisfaction in loving triune relationality a necessary attribute of God as opposed to a contingent attribute of God.
Am I right in telling Jeff that the answer to this question is in Doc's thesis?
Now THE most important issue that follows from saying divine aseity consists in the necessarily unsurpassably intense experience of satisfying and loving relationality is how to understand divine suffering. You say God suffers in Christ. OK, but I've always struggled (and never got satisfactory answers) to relate this to ad intra trinitarian experience. Wouldn't God, ad intra, know and so experience what God ad extra was going through? I don't see HOW you cut the ad intra off from the ad extra so absolutely.
Tom
Post Edited (TGB) : 2/5/2007 9:05:44 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 2/5/2007 10:05 AM (GMT -6) | | I really think that God is trying to get us MATURE.
That's all I see a Jivanmukti as being. A person who understands the TRUTH of reality...and operates accordingly.
Getting us to a place where, like Rudyard Kipling said, we treat the IMPOSTERS of "triumph" and "tragedy" JUST THE SAME.
Apatheia...undergirded by a sense of what is REAL.
I like this statement...from this place ( www.divinelifesociety.org/graphics/spritual_life/saints_%20mystics/jivanmukta.htm )
When he is absorbed in Brahman, the Glory of glories, the Soul of souls, the Jivanmukta will not be able to work. But, when he comes down from his full Brahmic consciousness owing to the force of Prarabdha (destiny) and Vikshepa Sakti (tossing of the mind), he will pour forth his love at the cry of a suffering soul. So radiant and compassionate is he. He is the ocean of mercy and love and peace, a Buddha or Jesus.
And this is what gets me.
Why is it that in the mystical traditions of EVERY MAJOR WORLD RELIGION...
some of those mystics of those religions end up saying that Ultimate Reality is LOVE????
Doesn't that tell us something?
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 2/5/2007 10:14 AM (GMT -6) | | Exousia: God "suffers" in Jesus, but that suffering is RELATIVIZED to the complete satisfaction that God has in Himself. To say otherwise is to tacitly deny all the implications of divine aseity.
Tom: I put Jeff onto a used copy of Greg's thesis that amazon is selling for $27! It'll get him into Greg's arguments. But we may need to have another walk-through on aseity Exousia. I was mentioning to Jeff the other day that God, as a necessary being, has to have SOME necessary attributes, necessarily instantiated, and SOME contingent attributes. Jeff is thinking that God's satisfaction from or sense of relational fulfillment can be temporarily lessened during the time of the creational project. But that would make it a contingent attribute. So the question is, why is unsurpassable satisfaction in loving triune relationality a necessary attribute of God as opposed to a contingent attribute of God.
Am I right in telling Jeff that the answer to this question is in Doc's thesis?
Sound good to me.
*******************************
Tom:
Now THE most important issue that follows from saying divine aseity consists in the necessarily unsurpassably intense experience of satisfying and loving relationality is how to understand divine suffering. You say God suffers in Christ. OK, but I've always struggled (and never got satisfactory answers) to relate this to ad intra trinitarian experience. Wouldn't God, ad intra, know and so experience what God ad extra was going through? I don't see HOW you cut the ad intra off from the ad extra so absolutely.
All I'm saying, Tom, is that NOTHING can disquiet God's fundamental peace, tranquility, and joy that is found in God's relationship with Godself. Nothing that happens TO GOD can affect that. That aesthetic satisfaction is OUTSIDE of the ability of Creation to affect. It's like the COMPLETELY UNREACHABLE part of Johari's Window. The Consequent Hypostasis is affected by Creation to be sure...by his very nature. But never to the point of having that inner joy disrupted.
I really don't understand how this isn't seen. This is the SAME TYPE of joy that we talk about as Christians! There is a inner peace and joy that NO AMOUNT OF SUFFERING WE ENDURE can ever take away...and NO AMOUNT OF PLEASURE WE EXPERIENCE can ever add to...because of the truth that we live by. A person could be TORTURED (experiencing the pain) and STILL as full of joy and peace as she was BEFORE she was being tortured. It's possible. It's HAPPENED with mystics before, as I understand.
I don't see the issue.
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 2/5/2007 10:17 AM (GMT -6) | | Maybe the issue is one of ABSOLUTE/RELATIVE.
All that is RELATIVE gets "relativized" by the ABSOLUTE.
If my ABSOLUTE joy is in God, then all other things I experience (situations, circumstances, etc), either painful or pleasureful are relativized to that joy.
This joy that I have...
The world didn't give it to me.
This joy that I have...
The world didn't give it to me.
This joy that I have...
The world didn't give it to me.
The world didn't give it...
And the world can't take it away!
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 2/5/2007 10:22 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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