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**NEW**It is not a matter of God or no God or of what God and whos God, all that falls here neglects the highest order of
the miracle that is life. We can discuss how man has perceived God over the centuries, the various attributes of that God
and the many names given to God by man, but none of that has ever changed the true nature of God. God eludes the furthest
reaches of our comprehension, for this reason seeking God intellectually is a spiritual pit fall because everything that we
need to know about God has already been given to us, it is who we are. So, respectfully, to not believe in God...is simply
not to be, therefore impossible.
How many times in a day do we see injustice, pain and suffering? How many people
do we pass each day with our heads turned the other way? How many times each day do we choose to use our words to wound instead
of heal? How many times each day do we use the selfishness of our own convictions to judge another? We are all guilty.
We are not perfect; it is a difficult thing to change the coarse of the chaos that we have created for ourselves, in our
ignorance, selfishness and fear. But we have a choice every day, to recognize our weaknesses instead of making excuses for
them, this, I believe is true repentance. True repentance acknowledges our weaknesses and offsets them with a desire and willingness
for perfection. Its like learning to walk, in the beginning the ability to walk is ushered by desire and determination but
later becomes a thoughtless act.
What we must understand is that whatever desire we hold true for ourselves is true
for all, God is the evidence of this connection, when we sever this connection we are severing ourselves from God. Until we
are able to reach the perfection God has placed within us, we must be consciously attentive to our opportunities for improvement
in all aspects of life, ever holding faith in ourselves, each other and God to guide us.
Everyday we should seek
a way to inspire, to show strength, compassion and truth in our nature. We should seek a way to express ourselves by example,
to share our personal beauty, for your beauty acquired may be mine yet revealed, this is how we connect, this is how we heal,
this is how we raise each other up from chaos, this is how we can achieve heaven on earth and this is how I know it is possible.
In the beginning...Man created God, better that God should worship man. When God lives within
the imagination of man, God is limited by the boundaries of mans conception and therefore can never be greater than man. This
is the fault in religion. If you say the biblical teachings of your God are from a divine source, then you admit again that
your God is limited;"he" is limited to the structure of your biblical teachings. Now if you look around you, and
you say God is in that flower over there, have you neglected that God is also in the grass beneath your feet? If you say that
God is within me, are you neglecting that God is also within the person next to you. What limits do YOU put on God? Does your
God look upon one class of people with favor and another with disfavor, is that not limiting God?
Peace,
Janie
I often wonder what it is I am doing here. Wake up every morning with my Starbucks coffee, of coarse since I'm from Seattle,
going to work every day. Just moving along to the beat of this man made drum, there must be a greater purpose, something that
equals the miracle that is life. What is that purpose? Well, the way I see it we are all moving to this man made beat, and
sometimes we fall. Falling can be a metaphor for any of the hardships in life, whether it is something we experience or something
we cause someone else to experience. Life is physics plain and simple and what you put out will come back to you. Every once
in a while a person has a chance to make a difference by simply lending a hand to someone who has fallen or by making a choice
that prevents someone from falling. Sometimes these deeds are not even acknowledged outwardly but when we are able to give
of ourselves out of pure compassion for our humanity the return is a tide of love that for a moment consumes you, and in that
moment heaven itself couldn't offer more healing. This is the miracle equal to life. So what is our purpose? I say it is to
learn to love.
Love,
Janie
Quote:
The essence of faith is an awareness of the vastness of
infinity. Whatever conception of it enters the mind is an absolutely negligible speck in comparison to what should be conceived,
and what really is. One may speak of goodness, of love, of justice, of power, of beauty, of life in all its glory, of faith,
of the divine-all of these convey the yearning of the soul's original nature for what lies beyond everything. All the divine
names, whether Hebrew or any other language, provide merely tiny, dim sparks of the hidden light for which the soul yearns
when it says "God." Every definition of God leads to heresy; definition is spiritual idolatry.
I had
an experience once, where for just a moment everything was clear and open to me, just a moment. It wasn't like a light; it
was more like a feeling of being ethereal and part of everything around me. I have never felt as close to being who I truly
am as I did in that moment. There where things that I understood in that moment that I can't recall, but the feeling remains
with me, and I remember enough to use the experience in many aspects of my life and perception today.
Ok, word
of warning, this will be another heretical post from Janie. I was at the grocery store the other day and picked up a book
titled "Left Behind" it is written by two authors, one traditional, the other a prophecy scholar and minister. The
book seems, so far, to be a very literal interpretation of the rapture. It is not very well written making the reading somewhat
tiresome. What strikes me about this book is how reminiscing it is of the need for the Christian religion to teach fear as
a way to influence people into believing in Christ. Now Gracie never answered me about why it is that the Christian religion
continues to teach children in Sunday schools about the fear of God, if indeed our current interpretation of the word fear
is a misrepresentation of the original meaning. The book distinguishes the reason very well, and the reason is because we
ought to fear, we must fear in order to believe. Fear for our immortal soul, fear of death and the afterlife, fear of Gods
wrath, fear of eternal punishment in a cruel, torturous and painful place, regardless of whatever beauty may lay inside us.
For this, the whole Christian religion teaches that whatever we are on this earth is of no consequence, that all here will
only end in disaster, and that the only escape we have is in believing in a divine savior who for that belief alone will forgive
us all our sins. So sin away Christians, ignore the world and all of its injustices, all of its pain and all of its beauty
and while your doing that encourage others to do likewise. Continue your narrow focus into the pages of a book for the salvation
of your soul while the world crumbles around you. Continue your belief that your purpose is not on earth but in heaven, therefore
excusing you from any responsibility. To make myself completely clear, Christianity and other like religions are foreign bodies
to our humanity, they are like a drug, altering our perceptions of our own nature; this is why there are so many variances
and contradictions. If I where to believe that the works of man on earth where of no consequence and that believing in Christ
was the only way to find peace, what motivation would I have to believe that anything that I do here on earth would be of
any consequence, whether it be in sin or in love? But we as humans do love, love is a natural thing and so even Christians
who's teachings exclude them from consequence, will love and will even attempt to do good, knowing that their religion teaches
them that it is futile. This is a contradiction. The church, however, easily disguises this contradiction in recruitment,
so that the hand that reaches out is also the hand that grabs hold and pulls in. Does this behavior remind anyone of anything?
Love,
Janie
Regardless of all of the social interplay involved in the witch burnings, of which I
am also aware, innocent people died, they died because someone or ones held the authority over their life and they used God
to justify their deeds. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Now, as most often happens in the face of this kind of evidence,
there is a tendency to break down the issue into incidence, making simple excuses for each occurrence, but what I am talking
about is a doctrine of thought that uses God to gain ultimate authority, so that whatever endeavor it undertakes is justified
in the name of God.
By setting themselves up as the keepers and the path to God, by selling a doctrine of thought that
places one man at better odds then another, by trading guilt for God, fear for heaven, rewards of life for those of death,
they are breeding contempt, prejudice, self-righteousness, justification, irresponsibility and illusion.
Here is a doctrine
of thought that places a murderer in the arms of God over that of an atheist who has done nothing but kindness for the love
of life simply because the murderer says that he/she will accept Jesus for his/her sins. If that isn't the most ridiculous
thing I have ever heard, I don't know what is.
So here's the deal, Christianity allows people to wear a mask of righteousness.
It is the perfect front for every evil in a man's heart, it also justifies their wrongs and deeds by setting them up as higher
than there fellow man and in the end they believe that they may save their own black soul with a simple catch phrase. Did
you catch LilBwana's post about so if there is no heaven, no reward after life. He says what then is the purpose? What indeed
if this is what you are banking on. Where he has it wrong is that he has flipped the scenario, Christian thought gives all
responsibility to God, so that works in life have no outcome because ultimately all sin can be washed away in an instant.
When you can see the potential danger to this you realize that God put us here to care for his creation, we are all a part
of that. You can breathe it in like oxygen and you can blow it out as carbon dioxide and in doing this you support your own
life and the life around you. You become a part of a larger purpose, a great existence. The tools for God are built within
you just like it is built within all of Gods creation, because God resides within us as a part of our immortal soul. You can
decipher that however you want, are we immortal because we continue to exist in the recycling of life? Are we immortal because
we reincarnate to a higher and higher existence, are we immortal because we die and our energy is released into the universe,
or are we immortal simply because our time here on earth has a much larger effect on the future then what we can perceive
with our short vision. All of the above? It doesn't matter, what does matter is that religion is too small and narrow to contain
God, but the human soul has all the power of truth in life, death, love and God. We loose site of this because man looks down
at his perishing body and worships the works of his own hands and mind, therefore limiting himself to the cage that holds
his soul. In this situation, we are much like those beautiful fallen angels, unable to remember that we were once free and
glorious because of our seemingly endless bondage, a bondage that we create for ourselves.
Love,
Janie
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