15 posts shown.
wearyhound73;52030809 said:Betty Collins5 said:
wearyhound73;52024802 said:Betty Collins5 said:Are you being serious right now? The whole reason I even brought it up is because being obedient is light-years away from sinning... 😵
wearyhound73;52024173 said:Betty Collins5 said:Why bring Christ's name into this right out of the gate? And when people are calling out obedience, there’s really no room for Him in that conversation because obedience is basically His whole thing...
It sounds great on paper, but he never actually said that. It was just some stuff cooked up by heavy-handed priests...
Are you being serious right now? The whole reason I even brought it up is because being obedient is light-years away from sinning... 😵
wearyhound73;52022180 said:
Man, oh man... what even is this? Of course being submissive is a sin, but now the real kicker is that your god actually expects you to be submissive?
Just tell me which part is tripping you up... 🤔
wearyowl29 said:Be meek, be humble, and find your peace!
🙏
wearyowl29 said:
You know, everyone talks about the seven deadly sins, but there’s an eighth one hiding in plain sight—one that doesn't even look like a sin at first glance. It's obedience. Honestly, it's caused enough chaos to earn its spot on the list.
It's funny, really. People often toss aside their own common sense and intelligence just to follow some authority figure. They turn into a total herd mentality from the get-go. It’s much easier to let someone else make the calls than to actually think for yourself, right? So they just trade away their freedom of thought for convenience.
Any society built on rigid authority relies on that exact same mindset, and frankly, so do most ideologies and religions.
Check out this episode of Science Magazine dedicated to this "eighth sin."
Looking at it through a spiritual lens, what do you all think? Is blind obedience a good thing or a bad thing when it comes to a person's spiritual growth and maturity?
How do you guys handle your own obedience—or lack thereof? What kind of impact has it had on your life?
Amy Brooks12 said:I can't believe I'm even typing this out, but here we go again. It’s honestly exhausting watching how things are playing out lately. You look around and it feels like common sense has just packed its bags and left the building. Everything is becoming so polarized, so loud, and frankly, so ridiculous. I’m sitting here trying to make sense of it all, and honestly? I’m struggling. It feels like we're constantly being pushed toward these extremes, and nobody is willing to just sit down and have a normal, rational conversation anymore. It's maddening! kaže:
Honestly, there’s just something about that whole idea—losing yourself completely in the heat of the moment like that—that feels... I don't know, a little surreal? It sounds kind of bizarre when you actually stop to think about it.
Honestly, it’s just plain ugly.
You can't ever truly give yourself away to anyone. Not really. And why on earth would I??
We aren't exactly the type of people who go around handing out gifts.
Because it’s absolutely divine!
Because it’s pure heaven: spiritually, emotionally, and physically.
krena;51119245 said:
For me, they’re really just different paths to the same goal. One person might spend eight hours a day in prayer, while someone else spends those same eight hours meditating... or maybe chanting a mantra out loud. It's all just different ways of getting there, I guess.
Ugh, you shouldn't use that word "JUST" when we're talking about stuff like this. It's such a loaded term... And obviously, there aren't many people actually doing it, which is why I mentioned that feeling a true calling is pretty much a requirement if you want to live an ascetic lifestyle. Personally? I think I'd actually love the quiet life at a Carthusian monastery... it sounds like pure bliss to me.😍
Amy Brooks12 said:Father Damir articulates the message of God's mercy here with such incredible, piercing depth. 🙏
Father Damir is a total sweetheart from God—a down-to-earth, zero-ego, genuine man, and by his mother's grace, a sharp-witted guy who witnesses for Christ and preaches the penetrating Word of God. It’s honestly no surprise that American youth love listening to him; they flock to his Masses and show up at his rallies where he does nothing but preach Church doctrine. And that doctrine includes the fact that Satan loves to attack sacramental marriage and the priesthood (the marriage to the Church)—a topic Father Damir dives into with incredibly deep detail. It was actually beautiful when he shared how he held back from being intimate with his high school girlfriend, Colleen (he probably didn't realize back then that it was pure asceticism), simply because they weren't "one" yet, and who knows whose wife he might have ended up sleeping with otherwise!
I truly believe that for him, there’s an equals sign between asceticism and love. I mean, everyone knows the story about his Aunt Slavica, who was his ultimate example of ascetic love through her years of serving her sick, dying husband. While he saw it as asceticism at the time, for her, it was just a natural (spiritually uplifting) (Godly) love for the man she was sacramentally united to alongside Jesus. Back then, she represented a much more spiritually mature soul to him while he was still just a kid.
BTW, to me, Father Damir’s Salesians feel a lot like those Neocatechumenal groups where priests witness to God's love using examples from their own lives. It’s so educational when Father Damir describes his brother's love for his wife—a woman Father Damir describes as "not particularly religious, but hey, she's his wife," and it's no wonder he praises her everywhere and forever. He talks about how his brother is completely devoted to her, studying her "inside-out" with ascetic devotion even now after their second child, and how he literally breathes in sync with her because he knows her fertile days, her PMS days, and her post-PMS days, all of which 🙂
Amy Brooks12 said:Betty Collins5, aren't we all called to live out our renunciation through kindness and compassion? 🙂
Rather than embracing the cross of life, shouldn't we avoid trying to 'empty' ourselves or strip away everyday existence by chasing after who-knows-what powers that exist outside of God? 🙂
You put that so beautifully, and honestly, thanks for the tip about the Carthusian film. I’ll have to check it out tomorrow since it’s pretty long—on Vimeo, nearly three hours. I don't think I've seen it, though I've always thought the Carthusians were cool (like Father Damir, the university chaplain in a big US city, who's actually a born Canadian, a sturdy guy... basically a saint 😍)
...but I wouldn't go as far as to say, like you suggested, that the intellect separates from the being. In Christianity, a person is an inseparable whole—body, mind, and soul—and separating them would go against God's natural law. The intellect is simply redirected (toward God) and sobered up [1 Peter 5:8] by connecting the mind with the heart—and then everything rises together toward God.
nepsis is basically synonymous with Christian mindfulness—that ascetic alertness over one's thoughts, the discipline practiced by the ancient Church Fathers to maintain sobriety of mind and prevent thoughts from wandering or drifting away.
That is what living the faith looks like: applying it to daily life, right in the middle of everyday experiences and the temptations that pull us away from God.
The arena for Christian asceticism isn't at the peak of a mountain or tucked away in a monastery, nor is it found in some egoistic, self-indulgent meditation; it's right there in the heat of life.
Casey Gomez said:Mayke, this wasn't intended as a search for God. 😲 Let God fast if He feels like it. Besides, it’s not the 80s anymore. 😲 Are you a time traveler or something? 😲
Amy Brooks12 said:Betty Collins5, aren't we all called to live out our renunciation through kindness and compassion? 🙂
Rather than embracing the cross of life, shouldn't we avoid trying to 'empty' ourselves or strip away everyday existence by chasing after who-knows-what powers that exist outside of God? 🙂
You put that so beautifully, and honestly, thanks for the tip about the Carthusian film. I’ll have to check it out tomorrow since it’s pretty long—on Vimeo, nearly three hours. I don't think I've seen it, though I've always thought the Carthusians were cool (like Father Damir, the university chaplain in a big US city, who's actually a born Canadian, a sturdy guy... basically a saint 😍)
...but I wouldn't go as far as to say, like you suggested, that the intellect separates from the being. In Christianity, a person is an inseparable whole—body, mind, and soul—and separating them would go against God's natural law. The intellect is simply redirected (toward God) and sobered up [1 Peter 5:8] by connecting the mind with the heart—and then everything rises together toward God.
nepsis is basically synonymous with Christian mindfulness—that ascetic alertness over one's thoughts, the discipline practiced by the ancient Church Fathers to maintain sobriety of mind and prevent thoughts from wandering or drifting away.
That is what living the faith looks like: applying it to daily life, right in the middle of everyday experiences and the temptations that pull us away from God.
The arena for Christian asceticism isn't at the peak of a mountain or tucked away in a monastery, nor is it found in some egoistic, self-indulgent meditation; it's right there in the heat of life.
Benjamin Taylor6 said:What I really want to know is: how many Carthusians have actually managed to immerse themselves in the onostran?
Or is it all just a collective delusion that they've achieved anything at all?
It shouldn't be hard to check, given how few of them there are left in the world:
Right now, there are roughly 380 Carthusians and Carthusian nuns living in 22 monasteries globally—5 of which are female. To give you an idea of their footprint, there are 5 monasteries in France, 4 in Spain, 3 in Italy, 2 in South Korea, and then just one each in England, Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Portugal, Canada, Switzerland, and the USA.
And when you look at their daily schedule:
It looks to me like they probably spend most of their days just sleeping. 😲 😁
The real tragedy would be if they missed out on:
Casey Gomez said:The core issue here is essentially how far an individual intends to push their own self-development and spirituality, versus how much they settle for frivolous, fleeting quick fixes—those superficial religious veneers and New Age recipes typically cobbled together from religious or psychoanalytic theories dressed up in naive semantics.
The term "spirituality" itself, which relies on spirit as its central motif, ideologically implies a counterpoint to materialism; it suggests non-substantialism. In nearly all religious texts, the imperative to renounce material wealth emerges as a necessity for the spiritual and secular lives of religious figures—essentially acting as an idealistic paradigm.
Such a demand placed upon a human being stands in direct opposition to our innate nature, which is defined by the permanent attempt to satisfy our own internal voids. As one philosopher clarified, the very existence of passion is a clear indicator that human reality is one of scarcity. It is an unquenchable scarcity that easily devolves into compensation through extreme forms of human gratification, manifesting as blind greed and hatred.
Thus, it is clear that in the struggle against our own animality, man must sacrifice his inherent inclination toward materialism to slowly ascend toward, say, the divine, in order to reach what is ultimately a true ordering of reality. Truth is ugly, according to N.
However, it is difficult to realize this imperative *a priori*, and even harder to abandon the psychological primacy through which we live our lives: our instincts.
The reward is hazy; the state of consciousness belonging to a sublime spirit is an intangible unknown that cannot be pursued if one isn't even aware of its existence.
It is obvious that such a philosophy cannot be contemplated unless it is lived. It requires a different worldview, a different tuning of the nervous system—something that seems impossible to the average person. This requires either an innate quality or circumstances driven by a certain destined force.
Our needs and desires are, even historically speaking, replaceable as momentary pursuits. It would be absurd to suggest that a modern person wants exactly what an 18th-century resident wanted, such as a new carriage and a horse. Yet, that was just as much of a struggle for them as a luxury car is for someone today.
So, who is truly prepared to sublimate nature—that nature whose enchanting, scenic beauty we admire—while beneath our feet, a dramatically fatal and relentless war plays out as a compensation for the eternal deficiency felt by those who live?
An ambitious man who works for hours just to enjoy wealth still represents the ideal of human will and struggle, but can he simultaneously enjoy his entire estate in the same way a higher spirit can enjoy the entirety of its own hard-won, superhuman consciousness?