Neo
Well-Known Member
Neo said:I suppose we start be applying some of the golden rules when dealing people, both locally and internationally.
No, it doesn't "require" God. Rather, we start walking with nature, instead of against it. And the best way to know that we're walking against nature, is when we suffer. It's kind of a basic rule of nature.Which still doesn't require God. Where I am going with this is that maybe we UUs have it right. Metaphysics doesn't matter as much as having a sense of relationship and respect for each other and the world. As long as you treat others with respect and love, it really doesn't matter if that is based on faith in a religion or on an ethical philosophy or on a scientific understanding of the benefits of altruism. Let's stop abusing each other over meaningless metaphysics and start loving each other.
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And for some further musings of mine, on a rainy west coast evening ...
While God could be considered the initial inspiration for one to take that first step of the walk, it's always up to us to do so or not. We may be given a vision that would be hard to resist, but the choice is still always ours whether to look upwards instead of downwards, to move forward instead of backwards, to seek spirit instead of matter.
I read once that all human beings will eventually reorientate themselves and becomes self-directed. This is when the soul appears to become "reborn of spirit", as the Christians put it. It's at this moment that an intellectual altitude is achieved and the true “silent Beholder” awakens into activity, e.g. the human being, "hitherto swept along on the urge of the evolutionary tide, and governed by desire for experience and for material possession, comes tinder the control of the divine Indweller. He emerges as the aspirant, reverses himself, and begins to work through the twelve signs of the zodiac, only now working from Aries to Pisces via Taurus (anti-clockwise), instead of working in the ordinary human retrogressive fashion, from Aries to Taurus via Pisces (clockwise)". In other words, the soul reaches a point in evolution where it turns direction and begins to traverse the zodiac in a reverse direction than has hitherto been done. It's at this point that the soul begins to tread the "path of return", e.g. it begins to work with nature and not against it. It's at this point that the soul begins to treads an evolutionary path into spirit instead of the old involutionary path into matter.