Comments on A Spiritual Diablog: The Profundity of The Captain and Taneal

Hey bro! Hope you're doin' better than last time w...

2006-06-01T17:45:00.000-04:00

Hey bro! Hope you're doin' better than last time we talked.

I was just checkin' my Site Meter, and the most recent visitor came from a Yahoo Search on:

what does captain and taneal mean

This here post was the Number One link returned! Just thought you'd wanna know. {-;

La Coloratura: Good for you. And the "bad love" - ...

2005-10-15T14:35:00.000-04:00

La Coloratura: Good for you. And the "bad love" - the badness there, in my way of thinking, would probably turn out to be something other than love. Love can get mixed up with other things, and even mistaken for other things...

Far reaching consequences indeed... the good love ...

2005-10-15T13:08:00.000-04:00

Far reaching consequences indeed... the good love I have attracted and chosen (happily) these days is worlds apart from the bad love I've attracted and chosen in the past... I am so lucky to know the difference.

Asiansmiles, glad I was able to convey a sense of ...

2005-10-14T08:53:00.000-04:00

Asiansmiles, glad I was able to convey a sense of what I mean. Do wish I had the manuscript published, since chapter one, "What Love Is," explains it more fully.

Lucy, thanks for those illustrations of the kinds of experiences with nature that people often find so meaningful. Sounds like in addition, you have a belief in God existing apart from nature that created it; so such experiences remind you of your belief and help reinforce it for you.

Of course it's also possible to believe in God and not be so responsive to nature; and to be responsive to nature, but not believe in God. I've known both types of people.

I think God and nature conside with each other. L...

2005-10-14T00:22:00.000-04:00

I think God and nature conside with each other. Look where Adam and Eve got their start, In the Garden of Eden.

I do some of my best thinking when I am out walking at the park. I can feel God all around me. We have much to be thankful for and nature is one of those things. Another favorite place to go is up in the mountains in Colorado. I take in the fresh air, the cool mountain breezes and the thousands of stars at night. I love sitting on a huge boulder out in the river and listening to the water go by. It is so rythematic and it hyptomizes me. I can always feel God when I am in these settings. We need to remember that God created this earth and gave it to us to live on. Nature and God definately go together.

Thanks Paul, that helped a lot.

2005-10-13T17:58:00.000-04:00

Thanks Paul, that helped a lot.

Lloyd: Tennille... Hmm... That's the fourth variat...

2005-10-13T16:22:00.000-04:00

Lloyd: Tennille... Hmm... That's the fourth variation I come across.

Captain? T? You out there? If you're reading, please help us out here.

But yeah, certainly what we've got going in the world as we know it is a UNIverse, and yet a fragmented one. Interesting point about how that's a necessary condition for human creativity.

That division between the sacred and secular worlds is one of my pet peeves... But I don't think it's to be resolved by ending the separation of church and state...

(BTW, it is spelled Capitan and TENNILLE).You are ...

2005-10-13T15:53:00.000-04:00

(BTW, it is spelled Capitan and TENNILLE).

You are right to remind us of the "wholeness" of reality. While it is evident that there are natural boundaries and distinctions that allow us to retain our identities (and ultimately express creativity), religions have had trouble resolving this tension. Some want to remove those distinctions and merge us into one indistinguishable whole. Others, like Judaism and Christianity, have gone to other extremes at times by widening the chasm despite the fact that their foundational worldviews ultimately break down these divisions and the mediataions between God and nature, including the spiritual-secular dichotomy (You wouldn't know that, however, by most of their contemporary expressions!)

Both extremes are probably indicative of the uneasiness we all experience in encountering the divine.

Asiansmiles: Good question.It is often pleasant a...

2005-10-13T14:37:00.000-04:00

Asiansmiles: Good question.

It is often pleasant and always self-fulfilling to love; yet self-fulfillment isn't the reason or motivation for love. Love is primarily about the beyond-self or more-than-self, even while acting on love promotes our own spiritual wellness.

Dr. Martin Luther King is a good example. He knew that if he just kept on doing what he was doing, he'd end up dead. He referred to this in his, "But I'm not worried anymore" speech the night before his assassination. He'd received so many death threats he knew it was inevitable.

In that speech, he spoke, with tears in his eyes, of "the advantages to a long life."

I think that no one so intelligent, gifted, and aware of life's value, would opt to be assassinated for the good feelings that can surround acting on love. He'd have to have been crazy, which he sure wasn't.

It was his love for others that motivated King. That was the passion behind his words and acts.

Hi Paul,just a quick note. i do not want to sound...

2005-10-13T13:27:00.000-04:00

Hi Paul,

just a quick note. i do not want to sound jaded, but this thought came to my mind and will appreciate your opinion on this.

I agree with you that love is a binding force. However, sometimes I think that love is self-gratifying.

We love others because it makes us feel good. Even in charity, compassion, empathy, etc. So at the end of the day, it's still "selfish" and "individualistic".

I still haven't reconciled that idea with unity and spirituality yet (just mumbling here).

Thanks.

Gulnaz: I'm in sympathy, but it's a symphony with ...

2005-10-12T15:48:00.000-04:00

Gulnaz: I'm in sympathy, but it's a symphony with major elements of cacaphony. I hope I spelled that last word right, didn't mean to get scatalogical... Eschatological, yes; scatalogical, no.

wholeness comes from togetherness, nature is a sym...

2005-10-12T15:40:00.000-04:00

wholeness comes from togetherness, nature is a symphony.

Liquidplastic: To me, love is divisive when we mis...

2005-10-12T13:25:00.000-04:00

Liquidplastic: To me, love is divisive when we mistake love for other forms of attachment.

Hiya, Justin - Not out of your league at all, seems to me. Sounds like you're wrestling with something very genuine: whether you're able to believe certain teachings, even the basic ones, of what I'm assuming is Christianity as you grew up with it.

People end up resolving that in a lot of different ways...

Gosh, I'd love to add something here, but I feel o...

2005-10-12T12:09:00.000-04:00

Gosh, I'd love to add something here, but I feel out of my league. :(

Umm... I'm feeling a duality in my life right now. It's like, I can acknowledge the existance of God with my left hand, and deny him with my right. I wrote a poem about it, it's on my blog today. This is it, recopied:

I dreamed of an enlightened explication
As if God felt he owed me an explanation
I knew I was mistaken
For I had been forsaken
A child without his Father
I told him not to bother
He left me then
He left his next of kin
He looked, though not with scorn
I understood, I was his crown of thorns
He offered to be the wind in my sail
All I was, was the nail
In his hand I was impaled
The exchange, can't you see
He offered me life eternally
I declined his gift
Denied his existence
Spit on his image
Stepped on his grave

To this day He offers me redemption
But I will not make an exemption
For a God that does not exist

"The violence that we do today is rarely initiated...

2005-10-12T10:35:00.000-04:00

"The violence that we do today is rarely initiated for survival reasons, and sure doesn't "just happen..." We have a dark side; I'm not so sure about nature... "

Yes, you are right in this respect. Humanity has a dark side and it's not natural.

By the way, I loved C & T ... love keeps us together and love also divide us, based on what it is we love the most.

Hi Zahirah - I like that about science too - the f...

2005-10-12T09:43:00.000-04:00

Hi Zahirah - I like that about science too - the fact that it never claims to have the final and permanent answer, but always remains open to improving its understanding of the physical world. Some mistake this for a weakness - there science goes again, "changing its mind" - because they don't understand the scientific method.

To me, it makes science a real quest and a part of our overall search for truthful meaning.

Liquidplastic: On the other hand, does nature really have a dark side? The violence animals do comes from their desire to survive. The "violence" of earthquakes and floods just happens because we build our houses where they occur.

The violence that we do today is rarely initiated for survival reasons, and sure doesn't "just happen..." We have a dark side; I'm not so sure about nature...

I find it hard to separate "god" and "nature" for ...

2005-10-11T23:20:00.000-04:00

I find it hard to separate "god" and "nature" for I see all as one, but with many aspects of life (both known and unknown) -- to experience the whole.

I understand more about love and how it connects us individually and collectively --- but only from my personal experiences and interactions with humans and nature.

Nature is raw, it does not discriminate. However nature is not judge for it dark side --- it's simply thought of as a balance. This is how I look at God/Creator or whatever you may refer to the invisible force. I see God as all there is, darkness and light, love and hate --- and the beauty and perfect balance of this God is mirrored in Nature's perfect balance --- the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Paul, your writing is so very profound, and I have to read it over and over again to really grasp the wonder of it all. IMO --You have answers without your questions, and questions within your answers --- a perfect balance! Still there is room for the observer to grow and explore.

hmmm...all interesting. I am deeply spiritual and...

2005-10-11T22:47:00.000-04:00

hmmm...all interesting. I am deeply spiritual and have experienced my own miracles that leads me to believe a certain way (following experience, not a particular religion). I was also raised by a father who taught biology, chemistry and physics. I love the sciences and I don't have any conflict embracing that part as well because science at its pure heart says we don't know what is out there; we're just giving you our best guess until there is more evidence that proves one way or the other. I love that openness and willingness to accept new information (I'm talking about pure science - indidviduals involved in science bring their own experiences to the table). Not that all atheists are the same, but they can have good points that keep your feet on the ground. THANKS!
p.s. on another topic. you are you guys getting your picture posted. i haven't been able to figure it out on blogger.

A: Yes, and I think that our own ability to be who...

2005-10-11T21:22:00.000-04:00

A: Yes, and I think that our own ability to be whole and together as one single-though-diverse-world-people on this planet is moving into ever sharper focus as the key to our survival.

Hi Kathy T. - I'd ask you the same question I asked Irina...

Mona, thanks. Mbains: But Nazism and Buddhism in t...

2005-10-11T21:16:00.000-04:00

Mona, thanks.

Mbains: But Nazism and Buddhism in the same breath? I'll admit they both end with "ism..."

At this point in human history, it seems to me that while religion and science both strive to address life as a whole, they approach it in different ways.

Religion/spirituality seeks a meaningfulness to life or reality as a whole which is congruent with the best that we can be aware of in our own lives in terms of intention, compassion, aspiration, hope, and love. To date, especially in the West, it's done this chiefly in terms of beliefs concerning God.

Science also seeks to understand life or reality as a whole, but it focuses on the world outside ourselves - the physical, observable universe. It simply tries to look at what's there, without regard to its apparent congruence or lack of congruence with human inner life - including, for example, the passionate desire for knowledge and truth that inspires scientists.

To me, it's untruthful for religious people to try to ignore what science has to say about the world. People used to be burned at the stake for surmising the stars were other suns, or that the earth revolved around the sun. To me there is no honest way but to follow where truth leads, and not insist that our present belief systems are state of the art. Yesterday's weren't; why should this time in history be any different?

At the same time, we are so far from knowing the shape of All-Reality that for science to dismiss religious aspirations and spiritual experience as necessarily non-reality based is way premature.

Example: almost everything we see in nature belongs to a kind or category of thing: a tree, an amimal, an ocean, a star, a planet. A universe? We don't know the answer. Cosmologists are divided on whether there exists just this one universe we know, or a multiplicity of them.

What if "universes" are not even the only kind of thing that exists in life or reality as a whole? We don't know what we don't know...

So whether or not we believe in God, or accept someone else's version of God as That which makes life meaningful, I think the question of whether or not life as a whole is meaningful has to be an open one from anybody's perspective.

One more point: while science does "try to find out what the whole of the universe is," it's basically an attempt to describe that whole, to map it out. Religion and spirituality, imo, are finally the aspiration to experience that whole, to be conscious of it. And that whole finally does in fact include us, and even our map-making process, and the map we come up with! The map itself is a new and unfolding creation occuring as part of the reality of All-That-Is.

For those "with ears to hear," science constantly informs our quest for, and consciousness of, meaning. For those with eyes to see, science itself is part of some larger pattern.

I'm sleepy and I think I've just blown my own mind... This may not make sense when I look at it in the morning. Thanks, MB, for such a thought provoking remark.

Irina: Is the God who shines through nature totally other and apart from it? Or a divine dimension of it (as in Paul Tillich's "ground of being...")? Or is the shining something imparted by Nature as a Whole to each and all of its constituent parts?

Kate, thanks for those concrete examples. I'm curious in what way that sense of being part of the whole can sometimes feel like "too much."

I like what irina said: "God seems to smile at us ...

2005-10-11T20:49:00.000-04:00

I like what irina said: "God seems to smile at us through nature..."

I like that.

I liked this post a lot. You describe things I oft...

2005-10-11T19:59:00.000-04:00

I liked this post a lot. You describe things I often feel, but haven't put into words. Sometimes I feel a oneness with the world around me. It's much easier for me to feel this in nature.

I lay on my back, watching a bird flying overhead, and suddenly I am that bird. I feel it's freedom, the cold of the air, it's heart beating, everything. Sometimes it happens through compassion. I am driving my car, I see an old man standing on a street corner waiting for the light to change. He looks beaten down by life, sad and poor. I feel tears in my eyes, even though I don't really know his circumstances, I only guess.

Sometimes I don't even want to feel this connection to life, sometimes it seems like it's too much, you know? But sometimes it's so beautiful too.

Which makes me remember what my best friend once s...

2005-10-11T17:31:00.000-04:00

Which makes me remember what my best friend once said: "God seems to smile at us through nature..."

Although, as I think about it, Hitler's own greed ...

2005-10-11T11:26:00.000-04:00

Although, as I think about it, Hitler's own greed and egoism led him to make major mistakes, ignore advice, and lose the war. So now I'm wondering if love may not have a closer inherent connection to reason than, say, fear or greed...

BINGO! LOL!

"Hitler" and his ilk, whether religious or otherwise (Nazism is a religion which, like Buddhism, demurred any awareness of gods) were quite anti-thetical to reason.

Just like any and each of us at times can be.

What about the way "God" is used by pantheists - God as meaning Everything

That's the only def I have never seen a demonstrable refutation of. My only 2 reasons for not subscribing are:

1) "What" is the "whole of the Universe"? thus "what" is "god"? Science endeavors to find out.

2) We (homo) have yet to discover the entirety of the first answer(s) and already have discovered a mathematically probable (via String Theory physical and natural source for "the whole of the universe": an even larger dimension encompassing infinite combinations of possible universes.

Experiencing wholeness...that is a wonderful conce...

2005-10-11T11:06:00.000-04:00

Experiencing wholeness...that is a wonderful concept to go along with practicing mindfulness and living in the moment. I really like that.