rodheadlee Posted June 29, 2020 Share Posted June 29, 2020 9 hours ago, Rain said: No, you can hope. It was only hope that I felt when I asked if He was there and if He loved me. The experience that followed is everything to me. Ok, but after that you know He is there. 1 Link to comment
Ahab Posted June 29, 2020 Share Posted June 29, 2020 On 6/26/2020 at 3:00 PM, Maidservant said: Not sure the degree this will be a topic of interest and I intend it to be conversational, not one topic; but I realized that I was derailing Duncan's thread about Spirit Prison, thus I carried this to a new thread. @mfbukowski asked me the following: "When you are praying/meditating/ "in the zone", are you aware of communing with a personal intelligence or rather more like being merged with the universe and one with all things? Those somehow are not mutually exclusive by any means." So my reply to that is that I have yet in my entire life to feel that I have connected with one being (male, father) in prayer (ish) or otherwise. And in the past, my traditional prayers (kneeling by my bedside each evening or morning) were some of my most excruciating and hell-full experiences. There was no pleasantness, peace, or God there--or not that made it all the way inside to me. I'm not saying this is 'God's fault'. I have a complex view of that situation, and I know it arose from many factors. But I rarely do a kneeling prayer these days. I try to avoid it. Sometimes I get to where I wonder if that's the ticket, so I'll try again, but, yea, normally I just talk to the air if I have something to say. I have also never had the kind of ecstatic experience some may describe of connecting in one-ness. I do have conversations with "dead" (not) people. I am constantly aware of my ancestors and husband and others I am not sure of except that they are there. I know (?) they are in the room or whatever their place is that still provides access to me (and vice versa). I know they help me (in response to prayer or simply as a matter of their love toward me). I know they hear me. I do like to do a grounding meditation outside with bare feet. When I do that, it's usually the tree and I that end up having a conversation. Doing a little something, really only a minute or two, helps me gather peace for the day. The person I try to talk to the most in my quiet times, is myself. Tapping into my own guidance, desire, authority etc of who I really am and have always been, even before coming here. So that's where I'm at with that kind of thing. Well, who and what are you, exactly? Do you think you understand yet? I think it is very important that each of us try to really understand who and what we are as well as we can. On 6/26/2020 at 3:49 PM, mfbukowski said: Well then we have Luke 17: I think that this brings up some very interesting implications which are raised by the CJCLDS in the interpretation of certain doctrines. First of all we are all human, and we are taught that God and Heavenly Mother- the Divine Duality in my thinking- are our parents and we are able to "grow up" and be like them. We are taught that we were made in their "image" We are taught that they ARE the highest good to which we can reach and that we should be "perfect" ie: "complete" in our perfection as they are. Do you think it would be fairly accurate to think that we are them in some way? That we are our parents, or a portion of our parents, because of the fact that parents reproduce themselves when they produce children? That's the way I think about it. I am a version of my parents, with parts of me from my Mother and parts of me from my Father, as well as my grand parents, and my great grand parents, etc, etc however great and grand they may be. So in essence what I want to be by being as great and grand as I may be is to be as great and grand as I can be, which is how my parents, or at least some of my parents, already are. On 6/26/2020 at 3:49 PM, mfbukowski said: We must have joy in our aspirations to fill the measure of our creations and have JOY therein. I agree, and it seems rather obvious to me so that we may have joy in what we are and may be. On 6/26/2020 at 3:49 PM, mfbukowski said: And where does this ideal being of perfection reside? It resides within us, in our hearts. Yes. And where else is it? How did it become a part of us, as something we have within us? Who put it there? Do you think it is also within every person who is the same kind of being we are? On 6/26/2020 at 3:49 PM, mfbukowski said: The very idea of what it would be to BE a perfect human being is a projection of what we understand that idea to mean. And we have the example of our Human God- Christ the annointed one- as the paradigm of what a perfected Human is. Because our dialogue is with the Perfect Human who resides in our hearts, in one way of framing the concept, I can easily believe that it is our own inner perfect selves with whom we communicate. And when we communicate or connect with ourselves, as you suggest we do, do you think we are also communicating with our parents who are a part of us? I know and have known some parents who seem to have an innate ability to connect and communicate with their children, and vice versa children with their parents. And I think we can focus to improve on that ability as well. On 6/26/2020 at 3:49 PM, mfbukowski said: At a certain point, being a good pragmatist, I see a distinction without a difference about whether or not God is "inside" us our "outside" us. If we are in the process of BECOMING what we see as the Ideal Human, the line between our personal conception of what that is, and whether or not that Being is within our without grows so thin as perhaps to be invisible. I think it is important to know who and what we are, though. What are we? What is our Father? What is our Mother? And how are we connected to or associated with them, if indeed we truly are? On 6/26/2020 at 3:49 PM, mfbukowski said: Yet on the other hand, I have had experiences where I have questions and ask them of that Being- perhaps my unconscious, perhaps someone/something else, and gotten answers that convince me that the answers I received was from a Wisdom that I do not have. So am I conversing with my Ideal Self within me or the Ideal Human somewhere outside me? The line is blurry indeed. To what "line" are you referring? A family line, as in a family tree, maybe? On 6/26/2020 at 3:49 PM, mfbukowski said: I also had an experience once where I was lying on a beach in the usual place I went in my home town of San Diego, and suddenly as I looked at the grains of sand, I saw them all as independent worlds unto themselves, and suddenly it was AS IF they became the stars in the heavens, each grain a universe in its own, and I was a part of all of it, like life itself, going on within me and without me. This was all probably at least a decade before the church found me. I don't pretend to have the answers, but I have found that formal mindfulness meditation helps me immensely. No mantras etc- just an awareness of my thoughts and their connections to my body, one guru of this form calls it "observation" rather than "meditation". It has no particular "doctrine" or belief that follows from it, just the ability to observe one's own internal state as if all of experience is a movie, going by in the stream of consciousness, as a river flowing downstream, and the goal being to be able to observe all of it impartially without getting caught up in the hypnosis it offers. Interesting thoughts to think of, or at least they seem so to me. 2 Link to comment
Maidservant Posted July 1, 2020 Author Share Posted July 1, 2020 On 6/28/2020 at 11:41 PM, Rain said: Maidservant - have you read The Power of Stillness. I highly recommend for you. For others too, but something you said somewhere triggered you might like it or learn from it. I haven't yet, but thanks! I'll put it on my reading list. Link to comment
mfbukowski Posted July 2, 2020 Share Posted July 2, 2020 On 6/28/2020 at 5:35 PM, teddyaware said: And yet the scriptures teach us that recipients of divine revelation actually come to know eternal truth. They don’t merely entertain an uncertain notion that they may know something that might eventually turn out to be true. Agree. The key is COME TO KNOW. It could come with certainty, I have experienced it. Yet often it takes time. Link to comment
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