B the Mystic

Christian mystic who's digging on existence while tripping a little light fantastic! I really enjoy seeing the universal and cosmic through the Christian frame.

[B the Mystic @Aximilli13]

If you listen you can hear the eternal song of the universe. Singing out:

🎶 Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you

We can tune into this at anytime. Drinking deeply the sweet succor of our simple being. Our very molecules dancing

[B the Mystic @Aximilli13]

You’re making a good point and as mystic I had a similar concern when I started exploring Christian mysticism.

But God isn’t an added layer and all the liturgy and practices are to get us into contact with something here now rather than some conceptual later.

One key insight I think Christians are circling is how everything we are and know is something we are on the receiving end of. We receive ourselves and experience moment to moment. Christianity frames Christ as the light of the world, the light that illuminates a lifetime. So in recognizing the source there is a re-orientating clarity.

It’s possible to see that the small egoic self we hold so dear is not the source of our existence that we’re held in something greater. This opens us to a paradigm shift in how we relate to ourselves and others.

I’m just saying there’s value in exploring it. Not the watered down, wait till your life is over to find out version. The heart of the faith is to realize deeply that which is alive in us.

[B the Mystic @Aximilli13]

You can if you like but it’s not about the labels it’s more about the underlying practices that train our attention and focus so that we can recognize the world before/beyond our cognizing of it.

Buddhism has a method for this, Christianity has its own as well. They are also exploring distant facets of human being so they approach from different angles.

It may help to consider that in general how Christianity is often presented is empty of the spirit of it, we usually get this legal and fear based religion.

[B the Mystic @Aximilli13]

You’re calling them bonus but they are hard earned wisdom/revelations. You can discard them but then you just end up re-inventing the wheel.

These spiritual paths and traditions have within them guardrails, and checks and wells known traps etc. The terrain precedes the map. Of you throw out the map you lose all that cartography.

These kind of explorations can really mess you up, we’re exploring the inner mechanisms of mind, and the direct “location” of our sense of self. So fumbling around in the dark can be dangerous.

[B the Mystic @Aximilli13]

The cost is over reifying our more material explanations to the point of calcification.

The exploration of God is in many ways an inside out exploration of human being. The essential essence and aliveness that gives way to all of our categories and sense making which is downstream of God.

It’s exploring something else via a different method then our usual empiricism.

[B the Mystic @Aximilli13]

@Ausbloke93 I did explain that God is not an explanatory device. The issue is people keep thinking God is in competition with science, as if they are exploring the same thing when they are categorically different.

[B the Mystic @Aximilli13]

@Ausbloke93 It’s not special pleading, it’s pointing directly at the nature of what people are exploring when talking about God.

[B the Mystic @Aximilli13]

Ok thats a fair point on the luggage. Let's put "God" down entirely for a second and just talk about the ground itself... whatever being is happening within and as. No agency assumed, no personality imported. Just the fact that there is something rather than nothing, and we're in it.

You want independent, testable, falsifiable data before we stand on anything. I get why. But I think you will have to concede that every method you have runs on something prior to itself. Logic trusts its own coherence. Perception trusts itself. That trust isn't established by the method. It precedes it.

So the floor you're calling solid is floating too. Floating in something you're already inside of and can't get outside of to test. By theological definition God is what we are in and sourcing our very being from. So that means we have to look at the nature of our seeing/experiencing itself.

Thus we need a different way of looking, we must look to the looking itself. There are practices that help us do this and it is from these spiritual vantages that people report when they speak to God's goodness. There is a kind of testability here too. Does this recognition hold up under the full weight of being alive? Does it produce clarity or confusion? Integration or fragmentation? Does it survive grief, failure, reality at its worst? Those are checks.

[B the Mystic @Aximilli13]

It's not on that third floor.. It only appears that way because you're trying to logically deduce God's goodness from first principles. God doesn't have goodness, God is goodness. Not a good thing but the source from being itself flows, and from which all of what we might recognize as good comes from.

This is a sort of materialist confusion stemming from a category error, because the very concept of "good" being used to evaluate God is itself downstream of the ground they're trying to evaluate. It's like trying to weigh the scale with itself.

When people speak about God's goodness it comes from insight into being itself. And how one is forever on the receiving end of their own existence rather than creating of. That is we are not self sourced, everythign that we are and know is being given to us.

[B the Mystic @Aximilli13]

@GreeneMan6 You just fabricated and projected this story out over these people. A story you don't even like. So you've created this strawman of people so you can dislike and dismiss people enmasse. Yet the only thing you're truly rejecting is your own conception..

[B the Mystic @Aximilli13]

Yes some one can test it.. But since largely the frameworks are framing experiential insight you have to engage the frame to properly see what they are framing. That is you you cannot investigate these spiritual frameworks using material measurement. The reflex to do so is a sort of frame dominance that blinds you.

[B the Mystic @Aximilli13]

@AlexTheStrait @hookskat I use to think she was arguing in good faith. Now I know she is engagement farming. She doesn't want to see.

[B the Mystic @Aximilli13]

@nosilverv I think because Jhana's in becoming mainstream have been plucked from all the accompanying teachings, and liturgy. They are a part of a spiritual path and progression that has been stripped mined by modernity into a sort of spiritual self exhaltation.

[B the Mystic @Aximilli13]

The bible isn't a legal treastise on what God commands. It's collection of poetry and stories that speak about increasing clarity into the nature of God through a particular people. So when we read teh old testament we are seeing how people saw God before Christ reveals his face/heart to us.

[B the Mystic @Aximilli13]

The Trinity also isn't menat to only be recognized at the level of language. Its meant to be recognized experientially. Like your parents telling you about love and romance and what first love will be like. Alot of the words and metaphors don't make sense until you encounter it. Once you've lived and experienced it, you can see how those words nicely drape and name the experience.

[B the Mystic @Aximilli13]

I think one of the biggest obstacles is the nature of language and teh concepts they ferry across. The conventional (and material/physical) ideas we have struggle to make sense of 3 persons of one essence.

One way that helped me was to consider the Sun. In the Sun (the Father) we have the source of light and energy, because it exist, its very nature gives way to Light (the Son) which is an expression\ and manifestation of the source. And finally we have Daylight (The Holy Spirit) is the energy that hits the leaves of the trees and the grass in the field, turning light into life. It is the active power of the Sun working inside of us.

They are distinct yet one in essence.

[B the Mystic @Aximilli13]

@the_wilderless Yeah I felt similar when I first started exploring Christian mysticism. However what I’ve found is it is very life affirming unfortunately it’s often presented in a form empty of its spirit. We get a watered down hell avoidant, fear-based dogmatic version.

[B the Mystic @Aximilli13]

There are practices one can engage. That help one to shift their focus from their thoughts into simple being.

In general we tend to only recognize ourselves in motion, in the movements of mind and flow of feeling. But thoughts come and go, it’s possible recognize yourself in what is still and silent. The space between what is thought or felt.

[B the Mystic @Aximilli13]

@Varney__ @Aynoniii One way is to get an adulterated or unmediated tastes of ones existence. Such a taste is usually preceded by a small death of the egoic kind. That can be quite clarifying.

[B the Mystic @Aximilli13]

@Varney__ @Aynoniii Consciousness is very likely not limited to people. It’s likely an intrinsic property of what we call matter. You can get some insight into that through meditation.