Despite my turning away from organized religion I still have a strong interest in religious belief and desire to improve myself and come to some form of peace/relation with this world/universe. Thus, I am always interested in genuine attempts to deal with belief/faith and was intrigued by this post (amongst other good postings at Still Turning):
In Your Patience
My reply to the post:
Winning your own soul also could refer to the fact that we must be careful of losing our soul in the desire to compete in illusionary games of capturing the minds of others (spiritually, materialistically, philosophically or politically) ... this insanity of demanding that others feel, think, or believe as "I/We" do must stop... its a destructive controlling process that leads to no good and much evil (as I understand evil)
Those that believe they must win souls have something buried deep inside them that scares them and that they fear condemns their soul to damnation--better that they face up to that fear/sin and allow the rest of us to go about our business of living and working on our own souls.
The devil (if I believed in such a thing--but metaphors are powerful) "wins" souls... God (if I believed in such a thing--but metaphors are powerful) does not compete for our souls, he is the light that will attract those who work on their own soul building their own personal vision through reflective soul-searching and reaching out to others (in a dialogic sense of comunication and exchange, not competition and defeat). The devil demands we submit to him, God wishes us to dialogue and commune with her, learning as we grow, living through example, and being there when others need us (not stalking them with our pronouncements of good/evil)
Least that is what I would believe if I believed ...
5 comments:
In Your Patience introduces neither the devil nor G-d Michael, so as you do not "believe" i don't see the utility in involving them.
Daniel Matt has translated salient portions of Zohar and a piece regarding the Death of Jacob is incredibly valuable here. I will attempt to avoid G-d and shall certainly have nothing to say about evaluating or saving other souls.
"The days of lsrael drew near to die" Genesis 47:29 prompts Rabbi Judah to speak. "Come and see:
When those days draw near if the person leaving the world" has struggled daily (we might say) 'to win his soul' he has these days built of such effort and choice and development. These days are his work (an existential task Michael) and "he ascends and enters into those days and they become a radiant garment for his soul!"
All the days draw near and some of them were damaged by cruelty, abuse, thoughtlessness and joylessness that were not repaired or redeemed perhaps upon another day of effort and love.
"The days that he ruined are missing
and he is clothed in a tattered garment." The soul or the life of man is impaired. Whether one believes even in the soul there is a record of our dealings in the wolrd. These are impressins upon children and students, communities and friends and upon the earth and all he took from it and gave to it in order to live and find and share in and respect it's beauty.
If a man "loses his soul" we can be sure he has damaged others and the world and gained nothing at all. He may have a vast array of power ties and have sat in the oval office, but you and i know him and he is known if only by those who know for his other garment. These are not just his deeds, but the essense of the damage he has done to the world, even souls delayed in coming into this world in their days because their fathers were killed in say Iraq.
"Rabbi Isaac said, Happy is the destiny of Jacob! He had such faith that he could say: 'I will lie down with my fathers.' He attained their level, nothing less! He surpassed them, dressed in his days and in theirs!"
hmmm, did come close to judgement of a soul, but that was at the hypostatic point where the garment became something meta-historical or gnostic at the most!
Today's Dr Science has a good take on the issue as well and i almost always yeild the decision to my Rebbe Dr Science!
http://us.f407.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=eip4b5prn9s9g
i am glad both secular and religious people are able to tolerate me under certain conditions. i look forward to the day when they will vote unanimously to forget any ill intensions they may harbored towards me or my scholar-gypsy-vagabond homeomorph rebbederrisa
Mason,
The post starts off with this quote:
“In your patience ye shall win your souls.” Luke 21:19
Now you tell me that half-awake reader would not say "eh, this is a discussion of the soul in a religious sense"?
But, besides that very telling quote, I reserve the right to misread any public writing...
and furthermore you should be the last person chastizing me for going off subject, criminy, your dialogue is like a spinning top shooting off into a hundred directions, never to be seen again
and the poster is a comrade, I sympathize with his writing and was just furthering the thread
and lastly, I always appreciate your comments... peace comrade!
well, ok Michael....i have to trust you
i am having a hard time lately.
reading and listening to that Sam Harris fellow is an incredible bummer. as a matter of course, Harris does what you just did in jest, comrade. He says the discussion is obviouly religious and liable to be treated however he sees fit despite the fact that frequently people are taking rational pains to make religious content something that can be experienced and known differently. People are crossing over before him and he reacts like we are going to set off the bomb or rather like a frightened former cultist who's experiencing the first doubts about his own once cherished programming. He should put his own head in those grad-school image scanners when he starts resisting another's attempts at showing and telling. describe the dynamic flashes and pretty colors in the acompanying map Samuel & call yourself in the morning.
i was hoping to take a break here in dialogic and do the kind of steady faithful thinking that Harris pretends to have done but for which he no longer has the time, as he is busy blaming a handful of patient moderates for the freaky religious predilections of billions.
I do wonder who Harris regards as *his* peers? Possibly people who like himself are casting about for some phenomonon to blame for the fact that the information revolution was a dud and alas there is not a balm in post modernity. Rushkoff is a kind of anti-peer to Harris. Both want a conversation, but would rather sell books to their fans than orchestrate the conversation they say is absolutely imperative. Their fans, so far as i can see, have as little understanding of science as they do of faith: fortunately or unfortunately for the future of the planet, the fans think the conversation is already over and/or are waiting for Rushkoff and Harris to write the books, ie say how it went. One thing i can say for Douglas is that he sincerely believes (a spooky word for Harris) in an actual exchange of signs.
The real and immediate problem is this: Rushkoff and Harris and more people than we would like to admit can't operate in the religious domain in which they appear to have roots and in the so-called opposite, domain of the rational where they think we should like to be until our return to dust and nothing but.
They haven't demonstrated how to do both at the same time or even speculated upon the possibility & (having failed both) they have not allowed themselves or their fans a moment to experience this impasse. Hopefully, at least their sincere readers will continue to function and think for themselves while we stare across the silence i am pointing to, if only because it suits me.
I wish they would go back to the barren emptiness from which they came (and in which we *all* perpetually cower) and decide if conversation is what they want after all. I am in no terrible hurry. If the messiah tarries it is well and good too.
in the meantime y'all know who's there. all the souls and their stories in discourses only waiting to be imagined from buddha & moses to Arthur Miller and Jacques Derrida. Just hang'n'in' the desert of the real. Maestros!
but even that is just a representation. What Morpheus says of the matrix is equally true of the desert of the real. "you can not be shown the matrix."
Sorry Mason, I'm dealing with some difficulties in my personal life as well, perhaps my reply came off worse than it was intended.
I am a person of deep faith that there is something more. I pray and seek answers. I try to commune as able with other life forces (human, animal, and other earthly manifestations)... I don't know if there is something more, but I won't rule it out.
My reply to Still Patience was a claim of radical doubt framed in a way that keeps me working on my own beliefs instead of securing my insecurities by forcing others to reinforce my apprehensions through their embrace of my doubt.
I don't seek converts. My doubt and fear and alienation is painful. I wouldn't wish it on my worse enemy. It is markedly so because I was raised to "believe" and I remember those earlier golden moments when I had no doubt about the meaning of the world, my life, and what would happen to me when I died--I was part of the chosen... and I knew where the others were going...
Harris does go overboard and I'm not sure if he really thinks it is possible or good that religous thought disappear. I watched the scientific movie (about quantum theory) "What the Bleep" the other night and it seemed to be very religious ... maybe science really is becoming religion? But what is Harris saying that makes sense? Is there something wrong with religion in its roots (at least the motheistic/anthromorphism types)? What has been the result of radical belief that views all other beliefs as wrong or worse evil? Can I really engage and respect you if I believe that because of your faith you are evil and will be condemned to eternal flames? How can that ever allow for true communion and dialogue?
As for Rushkoff, who I respect, and feel indebted to, his book on religion really seemed simplistic in that he mapped it out as if it was the latest media trend ... I don't know... have you E.L. Doctorow's "The City of God"? The characters in there evince a belief that I think is closer to my own form of faith... or if I was to have a faith maybe it is more tied into the larger earthly forces that govern our lives and the communion of beings on this planet (maybe along the lines of the doomed characters of James Welch "Fool's Crow"). I of course have just chosen two novels as examples and perhaps that says a lot about how i view other holy texts.
Mason, I respect your struggle to understand and your ability to question inspires me.
Peace friend!
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