Theosophy

And there you have it.
As far as the Pope is concerned, he seems pretty committed to social justice—at least from what I can gather—and frankly, it’s no wonder our local friars and bishops aren't exactly his biggest fans.

coastalfalcon61 said:From where I'm standing, I guess paths lead to the spirit rather than to God.
I feel like there's a massive difference there; the spirit is this abstract thing that you can't really define and doesn't necessarily demand faith, whereas God is a very human concept—something defined as almighty or good or a creator—and requires belief just to exist 😉

I think Steiner contributed more to your personal growth in this life because you actually studied him and took his ideas to heart, whereas you didn't do that with religious leaders. It makes sense, I guess. Whatever you feel helps you grow, you should probably just go for it. I didn't find my way to Jesus or Buddha right away either.

For me, I started out with Jesus; I was baptized and went through life as a Catholic for a while. Then, eventually, I moved toward spirituality without the religious framework.

There are much simpler religions a person could follow. Take unnamed, for instance—the core teaching is basically just good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. I think a person progresses a lot faster that way than they would through whatever meditations or astral projections they might try.
As Meher Baba used to say:
"No amount of prayer or meditation can do what helping others can do".

I don't really think you need a religion to live like that. Having good thoughts, words, and actions seems to be the fundamental bedrock of spirituality, not necessarily for moral reasons, but perhaps just because of how "spiritual physics" works, if you want to put it that way.
By studying Steiner and Leadbeater, along with some insights that followed later on, I came to understand why that specific approach to "goodness" is so necessary and vital. Before that, I was mostly involved in a sort of "cold" spirituality that gave me some results, but I guess it ultimately led to a plateau.

But honestly, I think God is the spirit; there isn't really a distinction there. God isn't human, that's just how we project things onto Him. For most people, God is an abstraction too, which makes Him pretty hard to wrap your head around. And God doesn't need religion, or faith, or churches to exist; He was just always here, before people and after we're gone.

coastalfalcon61 said:From where I'm standing, I guess paths lead to the spirit rather than to God.
I feel like there's a massive difference there; the spirit is this abstract thing that you can't really define and doesn't necessarily demand faith, whereas God is a very human concept—something defined as almighty or good or a creator—and requires belief just to exist 😉

I think Steiner contributed more to your personal growth in this life because you actually studied him and took his ideas to heart, whereas you didn't do that with religious leaders. It makes sense, I guess. Whatever you feel helps you grow, you should probably just go for it. I didn't find my way to Jesus or Buddha right away either.

For me, I started out with Jesus; I was baptized and went through life as a Catholic for a while. Then, eventually, I moved toward spirituality without the religious framework.

There are much simpler religions a person could follow. Take unnamed, for instance—the core teaching is basically just good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. I think a person progresses a lot faster that way than they would through whatever meditations or astral projections they might try.
As Meher Baba used to say:
"No amount of prayer or meditation can do what helping others can do".

I don't really think you need a religion to live like that. Having good thoughts, words, and actions seems to be the fundamental bedrock of spirituality, not necessarily for moral reasons, but perhaps just because of how "spiritual physics" works, if you want to put it that way.
By studying Steiner and Leadbeater, along with some insights that followed later on, I came to understand why that specific approach to "goodness" is so necessary and vital. Before that, I was mostly involved in a sort of "cold" spirituality that gave me some results, but I guess it ultimately led to a plateau.

I guess I did the same thing. I really love spirituality that isn't tied to religion; I'm just not interested in all the dogmas and rituals. But, I do make a pretty clear distinction between the church and actual teachings. I feel like the core of all religions is basically the same as the core of spirituality itself. It’s just that when someone joins a specific religion, they easily fall into this trap where they get weighed down by a bunch of extra stuff that ends up overshadowing that central truth. That's more the work of the church or some organization, so you really have to separate God from the church. Still, I totally respect anyone who grows spiritually through religion, because you can actually progress quite well that way, provided you have enough love in your heart.

coastalfalcon61 said:From where I'm standing, I guess paths lead to the spirit rather than to God.
I feel like there's a massive difference there; the spirit is this abstract thing that you can't really define and doesn't necessarily demand faith, whereas God is a very human concept—something defined as almighty or good or a creator—and requires belief just to exist 😉

I think Steiner contributed more to your personal growth in this life because you actually studied him and took his ideas to heart, whereas you didn't do that with religious leaders. It makes sense, I guess. Whatever you feel helps you grow, you should probably just go for it. I didn't find my way to Jesus or Buddha right away either.

For me, I started out with Jesus; I was baptized and went through life as a Catholic for a while. Then, eventually, I moved toward spirituality without the religious framework.

There are much simpler religions a person could follow. Take unnamed, for instance—the core teaching is basically just good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. I think a person progresses a lot faster that way than they would through whatever meditations or astral projections they might try.
As Meher Baba used to say:
"No amount of prayer or meditation can do what helping others can do".

I don't really think you need a religion to live like that. Having good thoughts, words, and actions seems to be the fundamental bedrock of spirituality, not necessarily for moral reasons, but perhaps just because of how "spiritual physics" works, if you want to put it that way.
By studying Steiner and Leadbeater, along with some insights that followed later on, I came to understand why that specific approach to "goodness" is so necessary and vital. Before that, I was mostly involved in a sort of "cold" spirituality that gave me some results, but I guess it ultimately led to a plateau.

I'm a fan of Leadbeater, and I think I'll spend a little more time looking into Steiner. There's probably some really useful stuff in there, I imagine.
You definitely don't need religion to have good thoughts, words, and deeds, though every religion seems to have them at its core. I'd say we should respect religious teachings, but everyone can find their own unique path. Actually, I think everyone's path is different; there aren't two identical paths or two identical lives across hundreds of incarnations.

I've found a relatively easy way to support my spiritual efforts, which is visiting places of power—these high-energy spots where you can get some developmental and health benefits. It's funny, because hardly anyone realizes that each of us has what you might call a luminous body or a light sphere (it's hard to find the right name, I guess), this super-intelligent energy structure we're born with that helps us grow, and as we grow, we help it grow too. It's like this developmental symbiosis we aren't even aware of. These places of power contain fully developed spheres that humans don't even need anymore, which hold all the knowledge of the cosmos. Now, their job is to help our spheres, which are still developing, and usually, they need to follow a person's life through several hundred incarnations to reach full maturity. These places of power can jumpstart that development by one whole step, something that would otherwise take a massive amount of effort, prayer, meditation, or other techniques. A sphere that's close to being fully developed will naturally bring its person closer to enlightenment, too. So, that's where this non-religious spirituality comes into play.

But I mean, at that point, it isn't even really Theosophy anymore, I guess.

Gregory Jackson said:But honestly, I think God is the spirit; there isn't really a distinction there. God isn't human, that's just how we project things onto Him. For most people, God is an abstraction too, which makes Him pretty hard to wrap your head around. And God doesn't need religion, or faith, or churches to exist; He was just always here, before people and after we're gone.

I guess I did the same thing. I really love spirituality that isn't tied to religion; I'm just not interested in all the dogmas and rituals. But, I do make a pretty clear distinction between the church and actual teachings. I feel like the core of all religions is basically the same as the core of spirituality itself. It’s just that when someone joins a specific religion, they easily fall into this trap where they get weighed down by a bunch of extra stuff that ends up overshadowing that central truth. That's more the work of the church or some organization, so you really have to separate God from the church. Still, I totally respect anyone who grows spiritually through religion, because you can actually progress quite well that way, provided you have enough love in your heart.

I'm a fan of Leadbeater, and I think I'll spend a little more time looking into Steiner. There's probably some really useful stuff in there, I imagine.
You definitely don't need religion to have good thoughts, words, and deeds, though every religion seems to have them at its core. I'd say we should respect religious teachings, but everyone can find their own unique path. Actually, I think everyone's path is different; there aren't two identical paths or two identical lives across hundreds of incarnations.

I've found a relatively easy way to support my spiritual efforts, which is visiting places of power—these high-energy spots where you can get some developmental and health benefits. It's funny, because hardly anyone realizes that each of us has what you might call a luminous body or a light sphere (it's hard to find the right name, I guess), this super-intelligent energy structure we're born with that helps us grow, and as we grow, we help it grow too. It's like this developmental symbiosis we aren't even aware of. These places of power contain fully developed spheres that humans don't even need anymore, which hold all the knowledge of the cosmos. Now, their job is to help our spheres, which are still developing, and usually, they need to follow a person's life through several hundred incarnations to reach full maturity. These places of power can jumpstart that development by one whole step, something that would otherwise take a massive amount of effort, prayer, meditation, or other techniques. A sphere that's close to being fully developed will naturally bring its person closer to enlightenment, too. So, that's where this non-religious spirituality comes into play.

But I mean, at that point, it isn't even really Theosophy anymore, I guess.

I’m liking this. I can’t help but draw a parallel here to the Umbilicus Teluris mentioned in Umberto Eco's *Foucault's Pendulum*. Telluric forces—the navel of the world and all that.
Or perhaps even Wilhelm Reich. For some inexplicable reason, nobody seems particularly interested in mentioning him. His theory of Orgone.

Why is God depicted in the masculine gender...?

Sandra Murphy33 said:Why is God depicted in the masculine gender...?

Patriarchy. Though, if one actually bothers to look at mythology, Goddesses exist in abundance, don't they?

Paul Ross2 said:I’m liking this. I can’t help but draw a parallel here to the Umbilicus Teluris mentioned in Umberto Eco's *Foucault's Pendulum*. Telluric forces—the navel of the world and all that.
Or perhaps even Wilhelm Reich. For some inexplicable reason, nobody seems particularly interested in mentioning him. His theory of Orgone.

I mean, Reich was honestly way ahead of his time, I guess. People sometimes point to him as a precursor to studying energy phenomena and stuff.
I just haven't gotten around to reading that book by Eco yet... I suppose I'm just not really in the mood for long novels lately.

Sandra Murphy33 said:Why is God depicted in the masculine gender...?

I mean, I guess a linguist might be able to give you the technical breakdown... but if you look at the deeper stuff, God definitely has a feminine aspect, even though, you know, God doesn't actually have a gender, just like we don't really have one in a spiritual sense. It’s almost like when we’re planning out our next life, we end up picking a specific body with a certain gender.
I think I read somewhere once—maybe it was in an old philosophy book?—that we usually lean toward one gender more than the other, like maybe a 75:25% split, but then as we grow and evolve spiritually, we start moving toward a more balanced ratio.

For some reason, it seems like the Messiah or the Avatar is always born as a man, and it always happens over in Asia. Meher Baba touched on this idea, though he didn't really dive into all the nitty-gritty details.

Every time you bring up God, you default to masculine pronouns.
By doing that, you aren't just claiming that the intelligence, love, kindness, wisdom, and beauty that constitutes All That Is is a "being"—you're also implying that this being possesses gendered, or at least energetic, polarities. Are you suggesting that God is defined? That He is this way rather than that? 🤔

That simply cannot be the Absolute.

You need to realize you’re worshipping a golden calf.
Or more accurately, you're worshipping Vol. 😉

Sandra Murphy33 said:Every time you bring up God, you default to masculine pronouns.
By doing that, you aren't just claiming that the intelligence, love, kindness, wisdom, and beauty that constitutes All That Is is a "being"—you're also implying that this being possesses gendered, or at least energetic, polarities. Are you suggesting that God is defined? That He is this way rather than that? 🤔

That simply cannot be the Absolute.

You need to realize you’re worshipping a golden calf.
Or more accurately, you're worshipping Vol. 😉

I mean, I guess it's really just about the hopeless limitations of human language, you know? And honestly, it's probably just our own inability to truly grasp the actual nature and attributes of Being. We could call it "The Absolute," or whatever, because we have to call it something somehow, right? I don't think there's any weird gendered conspiracy going on here.
The closest we ever get to understanding Him/Her is through those great spiritual teachers or people with real insight. From that perspective, we know enough—like, an encyclopedic level of knowledge—to give us what we need, considering how much we're capable of grasping about a Being that is so far beyond anything we actually know.

So, hey, feel free not to worship God, or whatever choice you want to make.

Gregory Jackson said:I mean, Reich was honestly way ahead of his time, I guess. People sometimes point to him as a precursor to studying energy phenomena and stuff.
I just haven't gotten around to reading that book by Eco yet... I suppose I'm just not really in the mood for long novels lately.

Fair enough. His orgone accumulators—not to mention his theories regarding energy flow through the human body—are quite intriguing.
As for Eco, I find myself mentioning him often, though I wouldn't exactly label his work as "page-turning" material. He can be dreadfully tedious at times. For instance, during the beginning—that section involving Amparo... I honestly felt the urge to toss the book into a fireplace more than once. The sheer amount of pathos and stupidity packed into a single character like her is... well, it's harrowing. Fortunately, he finds his footing later on. I felt a similar sensation while reading Lynne McTaggart. It was exasperating; how does she seem so disconnected from basic physics? Yet, halfway through, it’s as if the tone shifts entirely, and I actually consider her books to be Field Excellent.

Some authors truly possess the unique ability to demonstrate both their mastery and their complete incompetence within the span of a single volume.

Paul Ross2 said:Fair enough. His orgone accumulators—not to mention his theories regarding energy flow through the human body—are quite intriguing.
As for Eco, I find myself mentioning him often, though I wouldn't exactly label his work as "page-turning" material. He can be dreadfully tedious at times. For instance, during the beginning—that section involving Amparo... I honestly felt the urge to toss the book into a fireplace more than once. The sheer amount of pathos and stupidity packed into a single character like her is... well, it's harrowing. Fortunately, he finds his footing later on. I felt a similar sensation while reading Lynne McTaggart. It was exasperating; how does she seem so disconnected from basic physics? Yet, halfway through, it’s as if the tone shifts entirely, and I actually consider her books to be Field Excellent.

Some authors truly possess the unique ability to demonstrate both their mastery and their complete incompetence within the span of a single volume.

When it comes to Eco—beyond being a linguist, he was a medievalist, which allowed him to shine in an incredible novel like Baudolino, or perhaps in his essay collection In Search of the Perfect Language. It stands among my best reading experiences, alongside Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Our Lady of Flowers by Jean Genet, or Jarčev's celebration, or One Hundred Years of Solitude, or those letters from madness by Artaud Tarahumara and other works... 🙂

Joseph Anton—that refugee autobiography of the doomed writer Salman Rushdie, who, living under constant threat of a fatwa and surrounded by police and secret service, ended up marrying multiple times and starting several families while attending casual literary readings and award ceremonies. Any recommendation for an autobiography where he dedicates a few pages to Daniil Kharms—whom he met on some literary forum and found quite impressive—is fine, but his novels, beautiful as they may be (not that I'm picking favorites), feel far too Bollywood for my taste...
or Mark Thompson with his biography of Kharms

... ah

Gregory Jackson said:I mean, I guess it's really just about the hopeless limitations of human language, you know? And honestly, it's probably just our own inability to truly grasp the actual nature and attributes of Being. We could call it "The Absolute," or whatever, because we have to call it something somehow, right? I don't think there's any weird gendered conspiracy going on here.
The closest we ever get to understanding Him/Her is through those great spiritual teachers or people with real insight. From that perspective, we know enough—like, an encyclopedic level of knowledge—to give us what we need, considering how much we're capable of grasping about a Being that is so far beyond anything we actually know.

So, hey, feel free not to worship God, or whatever choice you want to make.

God exists outside our constraints of time and space, yet simultaneously constitutes both our space and our time. So, really, how could such an entity be confined by the concepts of life and death? How could it be limited by entropy?
Nature has devised several mechanisms to protect information from decaying into entropy. One of those methods is redundancy through duplication—a concept that was eventually harnessed to drive evolution. Enter: biological sex.
God has no need for sex. Therefore, categorizing the Divine as male or female is entirely nonsensical.
Even here on Earth, among living organisms, there are plenty of species that aren't strictly male or female.

The core issue is that we tend to view God in our own image—as something masculine or something feminine. Yet, even we, in our fundamental essence (our consciousness), lack a gender. I am 100% male; I have zero desire to be anything else, nor am I interested in chasing the modern trends of gender fluidity. And yet, despite being male, I often feel my brain operates in ways traditionally labeled as "feminine." I appreciate art, I have a keen eye for color, I couldn't care less about cars, and I lack a competitive streak. Does that make me female? Or male? Who cares! My consciousness is genderless.

Gregory Jackson said:I mean, I guess it's really just about the hopeless limitations of human language, you know? And honestly, it's probably just our own inability to truly grasp the actual nature and attributes of Being. We could call it "The Absolute," or whatever, because we have to call it something somehow, right? I don't think there's any weird gendered conspiracy going on here.
The closest we ever get to understanding Him/Her is through those great spiritual teachers or people with real insight. From that perspective, we know enough—like, an encyclopedic level of knowledge—to give us what we need, considering how much we're capable of grasping about a Being that is so far beyond anything we actually know.

So, hey, feel free not to worship God, or whatever choice you want to make.

There’s no need to call out His name or invoke Him at all.😉
The logic is straightforward: As long as He exists and we are relying on Him, we remain children. We remain weak.
Psychologically speaking, this is just a classic case of displacing our own authority and power onto something external.

Gregory Jackson said:I mean, I guess it's really just about the hopeless limitations of human language, you know? And honestly, it's probably just our own inability to truly grasp the actual nature and attributes of Being. We could call it "The Absolute," or whatever, because we have to call it something somehow, right? I don't think there's any weird gendered conspiracy going on here.
The closest we ever get to understanding Him/Her is through those great spiritual teachers or people with real insight. From that perspective, we know enough—like, an encyclopedic level of knowledge—to give us what we need, considering how much we're capable of grasping about a Being that is so far beyond anything we actually know.

So, hey, feel free not to worship God, or whatever choice you want to make.

If I worship a god, I am essentially admitting that I am separate from Him. I'm acknowledging that He is something I am not, and I am something He is not. It implies we are two distinct entities rather than one. By doing that, I strip Him of the title of totality; if I have to address Him, then He isn't "All That Is," because I exist outside of Him.

It is more accurate to say that God expresses His creation through me—that He is me—rather than suggesting we are divided.
It is more truthful to accept that I am God, and therefore it is my responsibility as a living being to learn the laws of existence. This is much more grounded than pretending I am some isolated entity just so God can maintain the facade of being omnipotent, omniscient, and eternal—some elusive force on the "other side" that I, as part of this decaying material world, am forever excluded from.

A God who creates a world and then stands outside of it, occasionally intervening just to ensure that His creation pays Him homage, would be a cosmic-scale ego maniac. And a world built on that premise is doomed from the very beginning.

Sandra Murphy33 said:There’s no need to call out His name or invoke Him at all.😉
The logic is straightforward: As long as He exists and we are relying on Him, we remain children. We remain weak.
Psychologically speaking, this is just a classic case of displacing our own authority and power onto something external.

If I worship a god, I am essentially admitting that I am separate from Him. I'm acknowledging that He is something I am not, and I am something He is not. It implies we are two distinct entities rather than one. By doing that, I strip Him of the title of totality; if I have to address Him, then He isn't "All That Is," because I exist outside of Him.

It is more accurate to say that God expresses His creation through me—that He is me—rather than suggesting we are divided.
It is more truthful to accept that I am God, and therefore it is my responsibility as a living being to learn the laws of existence. This is much more grounded than pretending I am some isolated entity just so God can maintain the facade of being omnipotent, omniscient, and eternal—some elusive force on the "other side" that I, as part of this decaying material world, am forever excluded from.

A God who creates a world and then stands outside of it, occasionally intervening just to ensure that His creation pays Him homage, would be a cosmic-scale ego maniac. And a world built on that premise is doomed from the very beginning.

Man, you're totally right, we really are kind of children and pretty helpless in a spiritual sense. If you look at what spiritual evolution actually means and what the whole point of life is, then yeah, that's us. Honestly, most people aren't even kids—they're more like infants. Personally, I feel like I'm still in spiritual diapers, so the walk to preschool is going to be a long one, and the journey past that is probably even longer.

I don't quite get why you're saying we shouldn't call God by His name or how we should address Him according to you? Is it more than just a language thing? Like, some other deeper issue? I can't quite wrap my head around the problem.

Sandra Murphy33 said:There’s no need to call out His name or invoke Him at all.😉
The logic is straightforward: As long as He exists and we are relying on Him, we remain children. We remain weak.
Psychologically speaking, this is just a classic case of displacing our own authority and power onto something external.

If I worship a god, I am essentially admitting that I am separate from Him. I'm acknowledging that He is something I am not, and I am something He is not. It implies we are two distinct entities rather than one. By doing that, I strip Him of the title of totality; if I have to address Him, then He isn't "All That Is," because I exist outside of Him.

It is more accurate to say that God expresses His creation through me—that He is me—rather than suggesting we are divided.
It is more truthful to accept that I am God, and therefore it is my responsibility as a living being to learn the laws of existence. This is much more grounded than pretending I am some isolated entity just so God can maintain the facade of being omnipotent, omniscient, and eternal—some elusive force on the "other side" that I, as part of this decaying material world, am forever excluded from.

A God who creates a world and then stands outside of it, occasionally intervening just to ensure that His creation pays Him homage, would be a cosmic-scale ego maniac. And a world built on that premise is doomed from the very beginning.

You aren't taking anything away from Him by worshipping Him. I mean, I think you might be overthinking the intellectual side of this a little bit.

In a qualitative way, we *are* God, but since we aren't conscious of it, it doesn't really mean much to us. We get all sorts of help along the way (everyone has their angels, or guides in the astral plane, or a little ball of light attached to their aura, stuff like that), but we still have to walk the path individually. It's like a Divine game—what they call "Lila" in the East—and we're just playing it.

Until we actually achieve that union with God, and until we truly live that experience, we stay stuck in this world of separation and duality—meaning, we just *feel* separate. No amount of mental gymnastics is going to fix that. I can know intellectually that I am one with God, but that's just an empty sentence if I'm not actually living it.

St. Paul said, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me." That's something any person can reach, and once you do, you finally get that experience you were talking about.

A Christian life really means being transformed to the point where we start living out the Gospel more and more in this world, and transformation is really just uniting with God and letting go of everything that goes against Him.

Sandra Murphy33 said:There’s no need to call out His name or invoke Him at all.😉
The logic is straightforward: As long as He exists and we are relying on Him, we remain children. We remain weak.
Psychologically speaking, this is just a classic case of displacing our own authority and power onto something external.

If I worship a god, I am essentially admitting that I am separate from Him. I'm acknowledging that He is something I am not, and I am something He is not. It implies we are two distinct entities rather than one. By doing that, I strip Him of the title of totality; if I have to address Him, then He isn't "All That Is," because I exist outside of Him.

It is more accurate to say that God expresses His creation through me—that He is me—rather than suggesting we are divided.
It is more truthful to accept that I am God, and therefore it is my responsibility as a living being to learn the laws of existence. This is much more grounded than pretending I am some isolated entity just so God can maintain the facade of being omnipotent, omniscient, and eternal—some elusive force on the "other side" that I, as part of this decaying material world, am forever excluded from.

A God who creates a world and then stands outside of it, occasionally intervening just to ensure that His creation pays Him homage, would be a cosmic-scale ego maniac. And a world built on that premise is doomed from the very beginning.

But hey, since the world is still spinning around after billions of years, I suppose that means God isn't actually wired that way, maybe.