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I’ve started this new thread on Christianity as I’m always made to feel so unwelcome anywhere else. I have read through Amy Green’s thread on the Spirituality pages (and watched the video) and it brought up many ideas.
Morals elevate us from acting more like savages in my view. Without morals, anything goes......nothing is sacred.........very far from spirituality or raising our vibration! If that sounds like a judgemental belief to you, as mentioned before psychopaths have no morals.
I agree Amy. It does make me wonder what sort of society we would have if there were no rules, no morals. Chaos and anarchy would rein.
Our real selfhood is without sin (the ways that do not work). Our real selfhood is pure, holy and spiritual. But until all mankind rises in spiritual consciousness to understand and live our one-ness with Spirit and the knowledge that Spirit does not include what most people term evil, then pedophilia, rape, torture, murder, corruption, etc would multiply unchecked.
This thread has brought to mind an experience a woman had with the 10 Commandments – shock horror do I hear? – but hear me out…
Traffic lights may seem to be an irritating inconvenience, but they are actually a loving discipline – a means of protection and of ensuring harmonious and orderly action; the ignoring of which can bring terrible suffering not only to ourselves but also to others. Most of the world’s faiths and philosophies are in agreement with the basic principles found in the Ten Commandments and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and basic law in most countries can find its roots in these principles. I've always thought of the Ten Commandments as the natural order of things rather than as items we can choose to follow or not. Obedience to natural order has to being blessings of harmony.
But before you get yourself tied up in “nots” (or even “thou shalt nots”) the way I read those archaic words in the Bible (see Exodus 20) is by trying to find the spiritual truths behind them. For instance, I understand that because we are one with Spirit, God as the very expression, reflection of Being, it is absolutely impossible as a reflection of pure and holy Spirit to kill, to steal, to adulterate ourselves or others or to bear false witness against their pure and innocent selfhood either. So it’s not so much, “thou shalt not” but “thou couldn’t possibly because..”
There was an inspiring address written in 1880 by Henry Drummond, [url]THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD[/url] based on Paul’s words about Love being the greatest thing in I Corinthians 13 and as he says:
We have been accustomed to be told that the greatest thing in the religious world is Faith….Well, we are wrong. If we have been told that, we may miss the mark. I have taken you, in the chapter which I have just read, to Christianity at its source; and there we have seen, "The greatest of these is love." It is not an oversight. Paul was speaking of faith just a moment before. He says, "If I have all faith, so that I can remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing…
Nor is this letter to the Corinthians peculiar in singling out love as the summum bonum. The masterpieces of Christianity are agreed about it. Peter says, "Above all things have fervent love among yourselves." Above all things. And John goes farther, "God is love." And you remember the profound remark which Paul makes elsewhere, "Love is the fulfilling of the law." Did you ever think what he meant by that? In those days men were working their passage to Heaven by keeping the Ten Commandments, and the hundred and ten other commandments which they had manufactured out of them. Christ said, I will show you a more simple way. If you do one thing, you will do these hundred and ten things, without ever thinking about them. If you love, you will unconsciously fulfil the whole law….
And you can readily see for yourselves how that must be so. Take any of the commandments. "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." If a man love God, you will not require to tell him that. Love is the fulfilling of that law…
Love would fulfil all these laws regarding God. And so, if he loved Man, you would never think of telling him to honour his father and mother. He could not do anything else. It would be preposterous to tell him not to kill. You could only insult him if you suggested that he should not steal -.how could he steal from those he loved? It would be superfluous to beg him not to bear false witness against his neighbour. If he loved him it would be the last thing he would do. And you would never dream of urging him not to covet what his neighbours had. He would rather they possessed it than himself. In this way "Love is the fulfilling of the law." It is the rule for fulfilling all rules, the new commandment for keeping all the old commandments, Christ's one secret of the Christian life.
To me, as I’ve often said here on HP, I don’t follow my scientific Christian way of thinking and living because I’m told to, or conditioned to, but because I’ve proved it. I reject abstract theory – I need proof that something works. Mere abstract words without proof are meaningless. We can talk abstractly till the cows come home and achieve absolutely nothing. Jesus talked and then proved that his words were true through healing (and we’re talking cure here – not learning to live with it, or accepting disharmony as part of us). Jesus was the Master Healer. To me he was the ultimate example of the highest idea of spiritual manhood. He certainly walked his talk!
As I said above, the thread on the Spirituality pages reminded me of a woman who violated a no-parking sign (big deal you might say) but felt mortified when her car was towed away and she learnt that she had blocked someone from getting out of his garage. As she prayed through her reaction to being penalised, she was constantly being prompted to consider the Ten Commandments. As she prayed with them, she realised that she had actually broken the spirit if not the letter of each one. This reformation of her thought brought an unexpected blessing. It's better to read all of it, but I include a few excerpts:
The Ten Commandments: a spiritual foundation[COLOR="SlateGray"]The sign said "No Parking." But I parked there anyway. What happened next changed my life.
I will always regard as well spent the thirty-five dollars it cost to get my car out of the pound. The whole experience had taught me to obey the spirit of the Commandments, in addition to the letter.
I learned that there is nothing so compelling as finding out for yourself that the Ten Commandments are to be lived in every instance and not just read…
But as I said earlier, this work with the Ten Commandments brought about a profound physical change as well. Years before becoming a student of Christian Science, I had injured my back on two different occasions in tobogganing accidents. These mishaps, together with a severe fall down icy steps, had resulted in a broken tailbone and five or six frayed vertebrae. The tailbone had been surgically removed to relieve some of the pain. Two teams of doctors told me that the remaining pain and discomfort would have to be lived with and that there was nothing more that could be done. In this condition, sleeping on my stomach was something I absolutely could not do. Even though I kept trying, this position was so painful that I could hardly get up from it. Think of my surprise one morning several days after the parking incident when I woke from sleeping on my stomach— and without pain! I had not been able to do this for twenty-five years or more and, for a moment, couldn't believe it. But I really was all right, and there was no pain. I knew then that this deeper understanding of the Ten Commandments and my honest desire to obey them had healed me.I was so happy that I could hardly contain myself. I had understood something of God's law.
And that healing was complete – she never suffered from back pain again.
Jesus proved that the Kingdom of Heaven is within - it has nothing to do with external influences, it's all about filling consciousness with the thoughts of God, Love, not the mortal counterfeit, the illusion. It's not about other people either (other mortal concepts of the divine). Morals are about our unbreakable one-ness with God, Spirit, Love.
With love
Judy
Talking about nots Judy!
yes.
Mind is a rebel without a cause. It does not like discipline because it is smug in ts own autonomy. Obedience is another most detested thing. Juvenile mind is fighting everything, questioning validity of things, questioning everything as a means of control, questioning to hush everything/everybody down. Questioning to assert one's own superiority even if it is just the winning of an arguement. Even if the objective of constant questioning and doubting is to impress upon themselves and others of their higher understanding but it points only at immaturity and ignorance. Immaturity and ignorance will stand on their heads to do a waltz to be perceived as wisdom and clarity.
One of the main reasons that most have turned away from religion-because they cannot dictate their own terms within that teaching. Too straight and narrow, they find caved in by what is clear-cut pointing. They have to broaden things to be able to breathe, because freedom for juvenile mind is to delve in and out of things. Tweak a bit here and a bit there, make it more palatable, put one's own stamp on it...make it more entertaining....so to speak.
Any great change comes by staying on the straight and narrow. Pretty much like a river. It styas straight and narrow. merges into ocean.... the whole weather cycle carries on seemlessly. That is what it is designed to do-its dharma But when it gets distracted from its dharma, plains are flooded, life disrupted,-pure devastation.
Life is bound by dharma. The innate nature of everything is called dharma. The natural laws that govern in existence remain unchanged whether one turns their back on them or stay open to them. If you hurt someone, it is hurting you in the same measure.
In a state of receptivity, the dharma unfolds, laws of existence are effortlessly observed. They are state of peace...when you are aligned with dharma, peace is natural state of being. Receptivity is the key to Dharma or laws that you state in the post.
In absence of receptivity, there is a pressing need for individual freedom, individual wisdom, Individual wants to super-impose itself on what IS.
When one is receptive, laws are forgotton about, because in your naturalness, in your very dharma...are all laws of existence naturally come together.
In absence of receptivity, there is a pressing need for individual freedom, individual wisdom, Individual wants to super-impose itself on what IS.
When one is receptive, laws are forgotton about, because in your naturalness, in your very dharma...are all laws of existence naturally come together.
Thank you for a beautiful post Jnani!
Yes, everyone wants freedom, but true freedom is freedom to be who we ARE, not freedom from the higher laws of being, or dharma as you call it. What many people consider to be freedom, is actually self-gratification or the attempt to control, rather than excercise self-control; or they are looking for their innate freedom and bliss in the wrong place - in the counterfeit of that spiritual quality that makes up our true substance.
Love and peace,
Judy
Oh dear, (see the bit about Bob Spongepants below) this discussion has reminded me of a quote I always liked from The Church Times regarding that medieval tool for control by the church - the[url] Seven Deadly Sins[/url]:
:
"We have psychiatrized away the Seven Deadly Sins. Pride, anger, avarice, envy, sloth, gluttony and lust have been made respectable. They have become self-fulfillment, stress, incentive, insecurity, inertia, defective metabolism and emotional tension."
Church Times, February 10, 1978. Quoted from A Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary, Vol. 3, p. 879
And here's the other! :rolleyes: The things we learn from Google. Groan.
[url]Each of the main characters in Spongebob Squarepants was inspired by one of the seven deadly sins. - OMG Facts[/url]
I’m grateful for the inspiration to start this thread as it’s made me remember many former HP members who I once connected with and whose lives were changed for the better. I was reminded of one dear lady in the early 2000’s who was filled with anger over a horrible injustice she quite understandably felt was unforgiveable. She also had severe movement difficulties. Well after a back and forth communication she told me how much calmer and happier she felt and one day, on a thread I came across unexpectedly, she was telling others of how all the pain in her knees had disappeared when she had found forgiveness and peace of mind.
In the Christian Science periodicals, over the past 130 plus years, there are tens of thousands of verified healings of how aligning our thinking with Love brings a reformation of thought and also physical healings. Here are excerpts from just three, (with links to the complete testimony).
The first one of kidney stones:
[url]As I look back over the years...[/url]
…Soon after our marriage I began to have a recurrence of the attacks with all the pain and distress of the former experiences. By now, however, I was certain that Christian Science could heal me. I had been studying appropriate passages from the writings of Mrs. Eddy. One was from page 242 of Science and Health and reads, "In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error,—self-will, self-justification, and self-love,—which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death."
I worked to understand the spiritual meaning of these words, and I was led to look up in the dictionary the word "adamant." One definition is, "an imaginary stone of impenetrable hardness."
It then dawned on me that this adamant or "imaginary stone" could also be the hardness of resentment and bitterness which I had been entertaining in no small way. This, then, was what needed to be dissolved by spiritualizing my thinking.
As I studied and thought along this line one afternoon, a feeling of peace and assurance came to me. Very soon I passed several stones without pain or discomfort, and this ended the trouble. That was over twenty-six years ago, and I have been free ever since.
By a former prisoner: My rage and anger were gone.
[url]A new heart[/url]
One day I told the chaplain that I had a bullet lodged near my heart. I asked her if Christian Science prayer could remove it. (Two doctors outside prison and one at the other prison had previously examined me and concluded that an operation would be too risky. I was in quite a bit of pain.)
…I told her I was shot when I'd tried to prevent a family member from being shot. From that moment on, I had begun a life of crime. I was filled with self-justification and rage every time I thought of the shooter.
I was learning to think of myself as God's child, but I hadn't been able to think of the other man that way yet. The chaplain said that no one had an excuse for bad behavior and that everyone needed to behave like a child of God because that's who we are. She read this sentence from the Bible to me: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" ( Gen. 1:27).
The chaplain knew I had a niece less than a year old. She said I should think about the man who shot me the same way I thought about my niece—as a pure, innocent child. At first I said I'd try, not thinking I could really do it. But then I thought that I was either going to know God's truth or not, so I said I would, and asked her to pray with me. I prayed, and a couple of nights later, when I was taking off my T-shirt, tiny pieces of metal were sticking to the inside of my shirt and on my skin around the heart area. My rage and anger were gone. I felt I had been given a new heart, one with no room for those outgrown emotions.
[url]"At one point many years ago I had been living under difficult [/url] personal circumstances, with many problems…."
Late one hot evening while my two small children were cooling off in a plastic swimming pool in the courtyard of the house, a bobcat approached them. I was doing the dishes in the kitchen about fifteen feet away when I saw the animal. Taking a small handgun that my husband had given me for protection, I went out to fire what I thought would be a warning shot into the air. The gun exploded in my hand.
Neighbors ran over and called one of the two doctors in our small town. I went inside, wrapped the hand in a kitchen towel, and called a Christian Science practitioner…
The doctor arrived, and I agreed to go to the local hospital, where he cut from my hand what he said were metal fragments, nerves, tendon, and flesh. He then cleaned and bandaged the wound. The doctor recommended a trip to a major city hospital for reconstructive surgery or, he said, I would have limited use of the hand. He added that even with the surgery the feeling in my hand could never be restored….
The neighbors had put the children to bed, and I, hand wrapped and bandaged, picked up the first book of Mrs. Eddy's that I saw. The book was Miscellaneous Writings and I opened to page 356. My eyes fell on these words: "The pent-up elements of mortal mind need no terrible detonation to free them."
At that moment it was quite clear to me that the explosion of the gun in my hand was a graphic metaphor for the state of my life at that time. Both the bobcat and the gun seemed to illustrate the fear and chaos in my life, and I knew it must stop.
In the passage quoted above, Mrs. Eddy goes on to say: "Envy, rivalry, hate need no temporary indulgence that they be destroyed through suffering; they should be stifled from lack of air and freedom." I put down the book. Then I finished the dishes with one hand and went to bed and slept all night free from pain. When I woke in the morning I removed the bandages and found that my hand was absolutely normal. There were no marks or scars, no sign that anything had ever happened to me.
Love and peace,
Judy
Thank you both for such a beautiful and eloquent thread. Full of love, praise and exploration, rather than oneupmanship xx
Dear Vanessa,
Thank you both for such a beautiful and eloquent thread. Full of love, praise and exploration, rather than oneupmanship xx
Bless you for saying that. You have no idea how much your words mean. :1kis:
I hope I may be allowed the indulgence of sharing another “moral” healing – this time of a dog, well actually, two dogs. It was that last awesome healing of the wounded hand from the gun explosion that reminded me of it. I’ve often read healings like that which illustrate so clearly (at least to me) that matter is not the fixed solid substance we think it is, but is actually objectified thought. That thread I started (but abandoned) a while back with the talk at the Burning Man event included a link to the multiple personalities enigma where the different personalities have different diseases and even different prescriptions for glasses.
[url]Probing the Enigma of Multiple Personality - NYTimes.com[/url]
Well as I was saying, reading instantaneous healings like the lady with the gun above always inspire me with what is possible, but I’ve always thought, “Wow, that is so far above my understanding – nothing like that will ever happen to me.” However…
I used to have a holiday cottage in Norfolk and it was a wonderful, peaceful place, until new neighbours moved in with 5 Jack Russells to the farm behind. Now Jack Russells are delightful dogs, except when in a pack. Actually, 4 of them were delightful and Sam on his own was too, but when Sam was with his harem and his younger son Cromwell and my soft old Golden Retriever Muffin was around – oh boy! Sam hated Muffin with all his heart and all his soul. He quivered with rage just to see him and Sam was forever trying to attack him.
One day I was sitting on the ground in my vegetable garden, weeding and Muffin was lying asleep beside me. Suddenly out of nowhere Sam appeared and lunged at Muff, sinking his teeth into his throat. The noise was ghastly and I couldn’t think, let alone pray. However, I had a friend at the other end of the garden, picking blackberries and she started praying immediately that she heard the noise. Sam abruptly let go of Muffin and rang back to his owner, who had arrived and sat meekly at her feet, looking very remorseful. Monica said that he had never done that before – that once he had something, he never let it go.
Muffin was very shocked and whimpered a bit, so to calm him down, I sat back down on the ground and after stroking him, continued with my gardening while speaking to him about loving his neighbor and about being a spiritual idea of God. I pointed out to him that an idea can never be attacked or injured, that he was always safe, always loved. Presently, he got up and seemed fine.
That evening, Monica’s husband came home and rushed round to apologise and asked me if Muffin was OK. I assured him that he was but after he left, Muff moved his head and under his long ear on one side, was quite a deep hole, with matted blood underneath. I got some cotton wool and tried cleaning away the blood, but it upset Muff, so I left it, telling him that in reality, nothing had happened. As a spiritual idea, he was innocent and untouched, as was Sam. I know my friend was praying too.
When I got home the next day, my husband asked how everything had gone and had Sam behaved himself. He was concerned and wanted to see the damage. I lifted up the ear but there was nothing there. Strange, I must have got the wrong ear. Lifted up the other one but there was nothing there either. I examined under both ears minutely, but there was no hole, no sign of any injury. The flesh, the hair, everything had been restored.
But that’s not all. There had been a delightful story in a recent Christian Science magazine called[url] "Better pets: a dog's tale" [/url]of the healing of an aggressive dog (in very similar circumstances) and Muffin sent it to the farm, in an envelope addressed to Sam. Well, Sam’s owner sat him down on his lap and read it out loud to Sam and never again did Sam attack Muffin (or any other dog that I am aware of) Actually I think Sam was probably healed when he suddenly let go of Muffin’s neck and trotted back to Monica after my friend prayed, but whenever, it was a reason for much gratitude – for all of us.
Sorry this was so long!
Love and peace,
Judy
Thank you both for such a beautiful and eloquent thread. Full of love, praise and exploration, rather than oneupmanship xx
Thanks Vanessa
Judy
Cut for brevity.
Nice work.
You seem to think that bible God is a moral God.
I do not agree.
[url]Jesus Christ: Madman or Something Worse? - YouTube[/url]
The protection you think it gives is shown to be untrue as scriptures are clear that way more of us will end in hell than heaven.
Now what kind of madman or mad God would plan for that?
We cannot ever convince each other about the reality of God but we can argue the morality of the laws he put up.
Care to talk morals?
If so, would you like to start with Jesus' and God's anti-love no divorce for women rules?
I think God particularly nasty for what he has done to woman. He has made you a second class citizen.
Man will rule over you is his idea.
Regards
DL