My Morning Reflections

I suppose these thoughts flow in the wake of my last post.

Let’s suppose a friend tells you one day that he/she really wants to get to know himself/herself and he/she asks you how to start the search/research.

A logical/rational starting point is … “get to know your parents and their respective lineages” … after all your parents are the fountain of your DNA … your genetic heritage.

Why would it be any different for getting to know Jesus?

St Louis de Montfort argued that Jesus is not well known because His Mother Mary is not well known … the same argument could be made for his father Joseph.

The above suggestion is not a Scriptural issue … rather a pragmatic issue that dovetails perfectly with our physical reality.

more emerging thoughts …

Perhaps I’m starting to understand the message James attempted to deliver with his post yesterday … his sophisticated words take time to penetrate my “small mind”.

Let me start with his term “RM … Rational Metaphysics”

Here’s my understanding this morning …

To pursue a lofty … pie in the sky … notion of metaphysics(Jesus) is not only an illusive path … it’s dangerous!

We absolutely must remain tethered to our physical reality … thus Rational Metaphysics.

but is the concept of Jesus physical, as you suggest
or is the concept of JESUS a metaphysical one,
a mental one… I would suggest we know Jesus as
a metaphysical concept and not as a physical one…
because we can’t actually be certain, JESUS the god, existed
and we really can’t be sure that Jesus the man, existed either…
so you have a problem connecting the physical, which may or may not exist,
with a metaphysical concept… JESUS as god opposed to Jesus the man…

Kropotkin

Peter … thanks for a very interesting/informative post. You are one of the very few people I know who has the ‘gift’ of being able to bring abstract thought down to earth.

Let me suggest a synonym for the word Jesus … “symbol” … or “symbolic”

As mere mortals … seems we need something ‘physical’ to grasp something metaphysical … thus the popularity of parable, metaphor, analogy and so on.

It might be helpful to set aside … at least for those who cling to the Biblical story of Jesus … the name and the alleged … yet unsubstantiated/unproven … stuff attributed to him.

Thanks to Peter my thoughts have now entered the world of symbols and symbolism. Lest I be accused of posting in the wrong forum … symbols and symbolism have always been a significant and physical/visual component of religion/spirituality.

  1. The Cross
  2. The Star of David
  3. The Skull and Bones
    Let me re-introduce a symbol that is known all over the world … yet … my guess is that less than 1% of the people who recognize the symbol are aware of it’s source. Even the 1.3 billion descendants of the first people to recognize it. I say(write) recognize because the symbol is not artwork … not a graphic design … not created by MAN!
    The symbol is an accurate … visual … rendition of one cycle of the Earth around the Sun. All 4 equinox are clearly delineated in the image … the vernal equinox being 2 days ago … a symbolic time to be writing this post?

Yin Yang.png

The ancient Chinese sage … Lao Tzu … used this image … this accurate depiction of reality … his physical reality … to develop his philosophy.
He visualized a trinity in the image:

  1. The Dao … the whole
  2. Yang … the white portion … symbolizing masculine energy
  3. Yin … the black portion … symbolizing feminine energy

Sliding back over to Christian Doctrine … at least Catholic Doctrine … we also see a trinity:

  1. God … the whole
  2. Jesus … symbolizing masculine energy
  3. Mary … symbolizing feminine energy

First of all, I just want to say, that I really like you Pilgrim_Tom. You seem to be a very deep thinker, and you aren’t afraid to share your deepest thoughts with the community. I respect you for that.

In regards to your first post, I think it is pretty much known that Jesus never had any children. Therefore, it is impossible to know the lineage of Jesus by seeing the connections between people. Nobody shares the blood of Christ.

I agree with your notion of rational metaphysics, although I’m not quite sure why abstract or spiritual metaphysics are dangerous. They are just wholly subjective and subject to interpretation. The dangerous part comes in when one person starts to think that everybody must conform to their viewpoint. Dogmatic, irrational thinking nonetheless.

We may never know of Jesus existed. That’s what faith is though. If it wasn’t based on faith it would be grounded by science. I do not know if Jesus existed, but I do know one thing. That people like Jesus at his time were a dime-a-dozen. Lots of people during that time frame believed they were the coming messiah. The only thing is, people still believe of the story of Jesus. Someone linked on this forum the Zeitgeist movie, it’s a real eye-opener. :astonished:

And Pilgrim_Tom, most people consider the trinity as Yahweh the Father-God, Jesus his Son-God, and the Holy Ghost/Spirit. Of course, you can make a trinity out of everything. Baseball, Football and Basketball … the Trinity of Sports. The Playstation, the Xbox, and the Wii … the Trinity of Video Games. Red, Blue and Yellow … the Trinity of Colors. It’s pretty easy to take something and to split it into thirds. The question remains however … do they matter, and are they the only three things of that whole?

You know that Jesus didn’t have children but you don’t know if he existed? :confused:

They were all saying what Jesus was saying about morality and God? I don’t think so.

Although Paul’s marketing of Jesus was a major reason for the success of Christianity, Jesus had an appealing and unique message.

Jesus supposedly said some stuff which was written down. “Knowing Jesus” simply involves evaluating what he (supposedly) said. Mary and Joseph have nothing to do with it.

Did Jesus propose a reasonable and workable morality? Is his description of the relationship between God and humans reasonable or not?

Yes, that is a fallacy, I realize that. Truth be told, I don’t know if he existed or had children. But the Biblical account of Jesus is that he didn’t get married and have children.

Yes, Jesus was unique as he was the accepted Messiah of the Jews. All Messiahs have their own message. Each Messiah is unique on that regard. When it comes to Messiahs, I like Bahá’u’lláh. His message resonates deep inside my soul. Unlike other Messiahs Jesus did not write his own scripture, and unlike other Messiahs he gave the overtly Jewish message that he had come to fulfill the Jewish law of the Old Testament/Torah. I do realize they aren’t all the same, and they have all have uniqueness.

I understand your reticence to consider an “alien” perspective.

The Western Psyche has never had much appetite for “humble pie” … I know … I’m an “atom” in the Western Pyche.

What does one think is more important - getting to know one’s self or getting to know Jesus?

One bit of advice is to start a dream journal. Write everything down which one can remember of all dreams. They are all connected. Getting to know one’s self has to do with the unconscious also.

Keeping your morning reflects more simple can be more profound. But that’s just me and that’s just you.

or everyone does… :slight_smile: sorry this is getting to be a bit of a habit isn’t it O:)

theguardian.com/technology/ … rnet.email

[i]Every person on Earth’s most recent common ancestor might have died less than 2000 years ago.
+
The first type is simply known as the Most Recent Common Ancestor, or MRCA. The name says it all, really - this is simply the most recent person who, through any and all genetic lines, can be connected to every single person alive today. While it’s fun to imagine a very small band of humans from which all humans are descended, the MRCA lived long, long after any such population bottleneck.

-the estimate that the MRCA lived only two or three millennia ago

we share ancestors who planted rice on the banks of the Yangtze[/i]…

io9.gizmodo.com/5791530/why-huma … -you-think

_

Unfortunately, I remember my dreams almost every night and they are traumatic if not downright horrific. How would I sort out every manner of violence and lay all those tragedies to rest by journaling? Wouldn’t that simply keep it fresh in my mind’s eye?

If I may interject with an idea I hope may help you, nightmares will go away if you confront them in your dream. That’s what I did anyway and haven’t had nightmares since. - not as easy as it sounds tho. I got the idea from reading Buddhist books about the afterlife, where the soul has to stand there and take anything thrown at it, and resist the temptation to run away [and get reborn].

Amor,

I’ve never been able to control my dreams as in instigating lucid dreams. Mind telling me what worked for you in steps? Being aware while sleeping would be advantageous.

Its not lucid dreaming or being aware while sleeping - as such. Naturally the contents will be unique and personal, but I don’t think that matters. I remember I kept waking up scared after the same dream [though there were other dreams too] and so I thought if I worked with that one particular dream I might be able to get it down. So step by step I’d wright stuff down immediately after waking, until I got a picture built up of what the dream was about. Then I’d walk myself through it, and tell myself that wasn’t really scary ~ bit like a horror movie can be looked at as comical. The hardest part is that the part of me which was scared was automative, and that becomes objects or people creatures etc. in this case I was in a circle of people outside the haunted mansion which kept doing mind tricks on me, and one of the characters done something with the ball being thrown ~ none of which was particularly clear ~ but which made the ball scary [like a mad face or something]. I noticed over the course of a few dreams, that when I passed it, the automative feeling went with it and the character was using that against me. So I turned it around on them by passing the fear [it] to them, and laughing. Upon doing that I wasn’t scared when they threw it back, because I’d played them the fool. Its a bit like when you get dreams with halls of mirrors in, the ball was like reflections as you turn around.

Hmm that probably doesn’t help you much or any sense lol, but the main thing is about tracking what’s occurring stage by stage, then finding a way to stand there and just take it. I found that whatever the contents of the dreams, there was a pattern to what ways they were trying to scare me, namely what my brain knew I was scared of. The haunted dimensional house/mansion merely represented my inner fears, it was doing anything it/my brain knew would hit hardest. I still get scared by things in the waking world of course.

if there anything causing it in your life or personality, such a thing is what your brain is probably trying to get a grip of. so I would suggest a two pronged approach, both working on your dreams and whatever the causes are, your fears and what have you. you don’t have to become unscared generally as one would have to be numb to be like that, and that wont work imho - I don’t think our brains will accept that, or that you need to be numb to defeat nighmares.

Dreams can heal if you interpret them correctly, and then they’ll stop occurring. You can actually heal thing like cancer and aids by understanding your dreams.

I hate dreams personally … It’s an experience of life I don’t enjoy …

Hmm…

There’s so much to explain here

This is a different horror story every night wherein I am always fighting or running for my life. It makes me wonder if I am glimpsing other people’s lives-deaths. Recently while sleeping, I was working on a job with a bunch of male/female immigrants. None of us knew that what we were doing was illegal. After the job was done, our employers gathered all of us workers together in a large room of this house. Somehow I overheard the employers discussing the reason of our gathering, we were to be locked in the meeting room and exposed to deadly gasses until dead. We were the loose ends on this job that could bring the heat of the law onto the employers. Not seeing an opportunity to escape, I returned to the room where all the unsuspecting folks were about to meet their demise. The door was locked from the outside shortly after and sickeningly sweet gas poured into the room. I warned everybody to cover their noses and mouths as I placed a scarf over my own. Anyway, it doesn’t end well.

The three things which hit me there are 1. giving credence to your dreams by imagining they are somehow real [actual people dying]. Stop that! Its giving fuel to the devil - so to speak. 2, always running for your life. And 3. not seeing an opportunity to escape, being trapped.

The theme seams to be the same irrespective of ‘different dreams’, ergo you can treat them all as one.

Looking for clues here ~ and to beat it you’ll need your detective cap on, um under your username reads ‘heroine’, which suggests you would rather find a way to win and to help those in distress but in your nightmares you cannot. I would at first think this is all your brain just reinforcing your persona, but if its more than that and its getting to be an issue, maybe let them all die and not care? …like watching a film or something.

I am probably miles off, but one way or another as I see it, one has to stand up to ‘it’ whatever it is. In my experience you can’t directly beat it and in your case save everyone, so maybe there are other options the dream is giving you?

Amor, your suggestions, care is appreciated. :smiley:

In the past, I’ve checked out some of the dreams here: http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/j.htm It says I have unresolved inner or outer turmoil. No shit, who doesn’t?

Where’s Arc? She might have more insight into the filtering through it all process.