Hi Rishi:

I believe that the Living Christ is our true and ultimate nature, which is slumbering innately in us, in mute yearning, waiting to be awakened. Jesus awakened his Christ nature and then became Jesus the Christ. But every one of us has the Christ nature slumbering innately in us. All we have to do is awaken it!

In believe God to be the totality of being, the inseparable cosmic whole in a state of synthesis. In and through the act of cosmic creation, God mutliplied, diversified, and "uniquefied" ITself while remaining an inseparable whole. In and through every one of us, God experiences ITself uniquely, and every one of us experiences God uniquely.

Thus, every one of us is a unique form of God, an inseparable part of the unitive cosmic whole. The experience of the ultimate, unitive state is the Christ experience. In it we experience not only the unity with God and everyone and everything, but also unitive love, unitive awareness, unitive consciousness and conscience. But the foremost of these unitive feelings is unitive love.

Because every one of us is a unique from of God, the unitive experience is experienced uniquely by every experiencer, and is expressed uniquely and differently by every experiencer and cultural group. Jesus expressed his unitive experience as "The Father and I are one."

Jesus was a divine messenger who brought us the message of our divinty. Unfortunately, we misinterpreted his message, rendered only him divine, and left ourselves mundane.
 

It is high time to remedy that mistake and claim our Christ nature, which is, after all, our divine right. There is, however, a price to pay for attaining the Christ Consciousnesss. The price is the egocentric self. But everyone has it, and the poor are far more ready to pay it than the rich. In return for our wretched and jaundiced, egocentric self, we will trade in our divine self—the greatest bargain in the universe!

Last Friday night on wondercafe.live! in our church hall we had Poetry Night. Everyone recited their favourite, self composed poems. I recited, among others, the following poem.

THE SECOND COMING

When humankind was desparate and forlorn,

A server and presever then was born,

A saviour, compassionate and kind,

To heal—and liberate—the human mind.

"He was 'The Chosen One'," so we have heard.

The Chosen One? What hides behind that word?

And who has chosen him? We neeed to know!

How did he come about? Where did he go?

We humans, through God's mighty voice

Did we attain ITS godly gift of Choice.

The gift of Choice, when we become its user,

Will make us into Chosen and the Chooser.

Now I must get ready for church. In the right frame of mind, eh, Rishi?

It may be like Baseball.

There are those who concentrate on the statistics...then there are those who enjoy the Game.

Just a Self-writing poem,

Inannawhimsey

Hi Rishi:

I do, of course, not know what Borg meant. I only know (vaguely :-) what I mean.

I have been a member of the United Church for less than two years, and have run into a lot of overly intellectualized, ultra liberal spirituality combined with a distrust of the intiutive, mystical or experiential grasp of spirtuality. And this in a religion that was founded by mystics!?

It seems that modern day Christianity has doctrinized and dogmatized the sayings of mystics who lived two- or three-thousand years ago, but distrusts its modern day mystics, who speak in the language and concepts of today, and, unlike the mystics of old, are answerable for what they say.

Shouldn't they be heard?

Thanks to forums like this, they are being heard.

I view the historical Jesus as a human being.  He was a human being whose relationship with the Divine became so close that the will og God became the will of Jesus.  The pre-easter Jesus was this "spirit" person.  The post-easter Jesus is what Jesus became afte the Easter experience.  Since we really do not know what the Easter expeience was in reality and since the talk becomes one of metaphor it is at this point that I see the post easter Jesus as a deified one.

Whatever happened at Easter was so profound that the disciples were convinced that the risen Christ was still very much present with them.  The post-easter stories are basically midrash.

Could it be that Gautama was in the same nature as Jesus having had similar experiences but in a different culture?  Is the Buddha and Christ consciousness one and the same thing?

Shalom

Mate

Yes, Rishi, when a religion loses its mystical and experiential roots, and becomes merely ideological, then it is quite dead.

Also, for many people, "metaphorical" means unreal or untrue. That's why they insist that our sacred scriptures are literally true. 

I think our sacred metaphors point to something very real and very true but ineffable: not describable except by metaphor. 

Hi rishi,

Thanks for the explanation. (I can see that you're someone who sees the forest, while I see the trees.)

I see the value of all religions, but like Borg, I live within the Christian religion as it's my cultural inheritance, and thus is as comfortable as an old slipper.

I agree with your explanation of "the way" in to the ultimate nature of reality. To me, it's almost as if Jesus is saying, "This is the way to live your lives, folks."

(I guess that's why Christianity for me differs from the orthodox/literal version  of "The Way " ie. "No one comes to the Father except through me.")

I'm reading some of the works of Thomas Merton ed. by P. O' Connell.  It is interesting to note that in the 300s ce. there were branches of the Christian faith that labelled the anthropomosrphization of God as blasphemy hence "the unknowable" or the "indescribable.  "Cassian and the Fathers".

Shalom

Mate

It is very hard to have the gift of seeing vissions and having dreams in the modern church. After all we have drugs to stop all that foolishness now-a-days. People like me tend to keep these things a deep, dark secret because we are ridiculed or assumed insane, or worse. I remember telling my preist about it once about 20 years ago or so, and he told me that I spend too much time reading my bible and I should pick up a romance novel once in a while. Luckily God lead me to an accepting church where slowly, and prayerfully, I've been able to use my gift with the encouragment of my minister. Still I vertually never tell anyone about the gift I've been given. (unless I go on the internet and tell the planet, hahaha) I am afraid.

Hi Kay:

I, as a self-professed mystic, am accepted in my congregation, but I agree that there is a general mistrust and suspicion of mystics and mysticism in the modern church. And this in a religion that was founded by mystics!? Go, figure!

I too consider myself a mystic.

Shalom

Mate

Yes, Rishi, we need to re-discover our mystical roots! Once we do, we know what Jesus meant with his kingdom of God: the actual experience of God's presence! And not only that, but all of our scriptures, and any mystically inspired writings at all, will come alive for us, and suddenly make so much more sense!

I think the greatest concern that should be addressed at the upcoming General Council is the dire need for our Church to foster the practices that bring it about the mystical union and communion. Everything else is secondary to this overarching need!

Rejoice, and be glad,

Blessed are you, holy are you!

Rejoice, and be glad,

Yours is the kingdom of God.

Thanks for this, Mendalla, I never quite thought of it that way.

Rishi and Mendalla,

Bruce Sanguin draws on some of Ken Wilber's ideas in Emerging Church.  It is a fascinating little book, easy to read but with much depth. 

We did a wondercafe book study on Emerging Church back in the fall of 08.  Arminius and I co-hosted it, and it was great fun.

Hi Mendalla:

I'm partway into Ken Wilber's "Theory of Everything" and am particularly taken by the concept of "co-evolution."

The word and concept of co-evolution, though, was coined in the 70ies by the Zen Centre of San Francisco, which was instrumental in publishing the magazine "Co-Evolution Quarterly" and successive editions of the "Whole Earth Catalog." The foreword to each Whole Earth Catalog was: "We are as gods and might as well get good at it."

"We are as gods" is a momentary insight, but "getting good at it" takes a lifetime, or several lifetimes.

Hi P.P.: You can find out more about Ken Wilber at http://integrallife.com 

You might also be interested in http://EnlightenNext.org 

This integration between analytical and synthetical consciousness is where the evolution of consciousness is headed. In the fully intregrated state of consciousness we simultaneously experience the cosmos as a unitive whole in a state of synthesis and analyze it from the unifying viewpoint of the synthesis. A fully integrated synthetical/analytical consciousness rather than the analytical consciousness that most of us have, or the either/or flip/flop between analytical and synthetical consciousness.

The most exciting thing about this evolution of consciousness is that we are co-evolutionaries in this sacred process, consciously and purposely evolving our consciousness in that direction.

Actually, a decent Public Library should be good enough. London Public (which is far from the best stocked PL I've seen) has several of his titles, including the autobiography that you mention.

Mendalla