After years of struggling with an addiction to smoking I was able to quit it overnight once I realized (not just thought but understood) that the voice telling me to smoke wasn't me. At the time I had recently watched Jordan Peterson talking about dragons so everytime the voice showed up I just thought to myself "there goes the dragon again" and in a few weeks it completely stopped telling me to smoke
In case of sinful passions it's like recognizing an actual enemy nearby, who seems like your close friend (or lover), who you trust and allow to be very close to you and influence you. But this enemy actually wants you dead, it wants to separate you from the good, from God, so you would voluntarily die forever and take others with you. It has no mercy.
This interview clip compelled me to repent of a particular self-destructive pattern of behavior and ask God to free me and my desires from enslavement to it. Your videos are informative, and although I wrestle with a lot of it, they're helpful in many other important ways as well.
I had quite a few ‘spiritual’ experiences all the way to outright full on ‘manifestation’. At work, seeing a demon. That’s the most bombastic one. Instead of being all ‘wow! I can’t believe it! I must be special!’ I got back to the station and prayed for that house and person living there. More people need to adopt an understanding that these experiences used to be quite normal. And for a large part of the world they still are normal. It’s *our* culture that treats these as abnormal. They are what they are. A part of the embedded universe you live in. Pray and move on Edit: as I’ve gotten older I think the ‘specialness’ people feel is the hook. I used to. I see them now as moments God allows. And if you understand Christianity is the pen-ultimate ‘tech’ to deal with nasties, it can’t help but draw you deeper into faith and prayer. Orthodoxy has a whole battery of prayers for this stuff. God bless.
Note transcript from video: Let’s say you’re addicted to something, and you know it’s an addiction because you can’t control it, and it kind of pulls you, that’s a principality, it’s a pattern in reality, that is cosmic - its cosmic because you’re not the only person with that addiction, it’s an actual real pattern that exists in the world, in which you are participating, and that you are not only participating in but that by engaging in these bad habits and bad behaviours, you are feeding it. You’re sacrificing your time and your attention to these patterns, and you’re making it stronger in the world, because you’re like a branch for it, a body for it, a tool for it to appear in the world. That’s a demon, and you can be possessed by it, and you can be a tool for it to spread in the world.
I love the sentiment, "you should ignore all spiritual experiences", but I take it to mean "don't reach conclusions about them". Willful ignorance is not usually helpful! That buried curiosity may become a pea beneath your library. I don't quite understand the orthodox life, but I appreciate its stabilizing presence. I think women have a lot to teach men about how to become comfortable with different ways of being ("flirt mode", etc), but for now that description just sounds like, "don't bring that into my life, it makes me uncomfortable". And the church acts as a barrier against that "chaos", which belongs to the perceiver, not necessarily the perceived. The unconditional love of God, I think, exists precisely because idiosyncrasy is precious. Especially as a person individuates, integrates, hones ones idiosyncrasies. Infinite thanks to you, Jonathan, for bringing pattern & myth into the Christian conversation!
I'm a big fan of NDE testimonials and research, but this discussion was a LONG TIME COMING and, ironically, actually agrees with one of my favourite esoteric philosophers if all time (the Canadian) Manley P Hall and also the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
I absolutely went through that whole phase too. Although I've always had a knack for spiritual matters I've recently realised that I don't seem able to shake off my materialism. I still have the feeling that everything comes down to matter and I can't see how spiritual matters aren't just in our imagination. I wonder if anyone else has that problem?
I've had a gradual shift over years into seeing that most things around us are processes that require material. For example combustion is a process and exist as such, but doesn't come about until it's material conditions are met. So in a sense the process is the "real" thing, and the material just allows it to come into existence. I don't know if this makes any sense, but it's something I suppose.
I would highly encourage you to go to an orthodox church near you, and attend a liturgy. When you go, ask God to reveal Himself to you, with full earnestness. And see what happens when you truly experience God Himself. Peace be with you friend.
@@whatsinameme5258 Maybe you could say so, if you consider it just neurons firing in our brains. But I've come to realise that it just doesn't really matter haha.
Late reply, but have you read Stephen Freeman's book, Everywhere Present? It helps dispel some of the ideas of God as an "extra" in the universe who lives "upstairs" and is disconnected from the everyday world. Also C.S Lewis' Miracles might be helpful. Alternatively, Viktor Frankl's book "Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning" has a good chapter on the transcendent quality of conscience (and it ties into the idea of God as the Ground of Being in Tillich's terms), and that really was one of the first books to set me off on my journey to Christianity. It might help you see a bit more "how" God and the spiritual tie in with our experienced world. Edit: If you're after some books to dispel materialist presuppositions, however, I'd recommend "The Science Delusion" by Merlin Sheldrake, along with "Believing Is Seeing" by Michael Guillen (especially that last one). They're both very readable. Edward Feser's "The Last Superstition" is a very good (but very angry!) book that contrasts our modern mechanistic view of the world with the ancient teleological view of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.
Spiritual reality is something crazy, what I find most amazing Is the ritual Time, like the way the Liturgical calendar and the events in the world Fit together. "Synchronicities" and anniversaries, names and places, it all seems to explain each other and embody a higher order.
This gets me to think of a debate within Western Rite Orthodoxy between the ROCOR and Antiochian Vicariate, regarding whether or not Rome still had some good and Orthodox-compatible ideas AFTER 1054, such as the Rosary. ROCORWR says no, anything more recent then Pater Nostra beads is “Prelest” that over-stimulates the imagination. AVWR disagrees, saying several things from 1054-1549 are salvageable for Orthodox use. My mother, who is a deeply visual person, has always prayed the rosary, but rosary or not, has never not been able to visualize what she’s praying about, it’s just how she’s built. Short of being personally trained for years by some Hysicast expert, what is she supposed to do about this? “Not visualizing” while meditating is so alien to her that she honestly has no idea what the argument derived from the Desert Fathers even means.
I'm not sure what visualization debate is about, but not visualization I think could be about praying staying in head vs communicating - visualization maybe means fantasy you know? Idk
I’ve been a recovering catholic since 1974 and still can’t pray properly. RC ingrains the young brain in meaningless rote prayer. Tells them there’s something wrong with them if the rosary isn’t helping. Brainwashed RCs think if they pray the rosary better, the Pope will stop enabling perversion. Sad.
Prelest gets used a cudgel to hit catholics with by "orthobro"/convertodox types. They'll say Fatma was prelest but the fire of the orthodox is totally legit. So my hackles raise when I see this. Discernment is needed, yes. But discernment is not exclusive to orthodox. There is a reason why the catholic church questions things like Međugorje, Things have to pass a smell test with us too.
Jonathan, can you please talk about spiritual delusion as shown on the series Midnight Mass? Lots to unpack there. I’m not sure if a series like that is helpful or harmful from a spiritual perspective.
Jesus represents the union of opposites, flesh and spirit, he is the incarnation. All the spiritual experiences in the world mean nothing if they are not embodied through our actions!! Love is the embodiment of divine knowledge. Many people have so called spiritual experiences, however, in their actions you can see that their body is “hosting” a different spirit... 1 John “no one who remains in him sins; no one who sins has seen him or knows him” A good example of prelest is Alan watts. He was deceived and thought he knew god through spiritual experiences, but he was really a depressed alcoholic who misled many down the path of deception.
It seems many "spiritual gurus" end up in the path of self destruction or never feeling fulfilled by the end of their lives. (speaking generally here.)
That you think these are opposites means you're caught into trap of False Dialectics, that the west, and the (far) east for that matter, is guilty of being constantly in
Alan Watts shared his opinion, like Terence McKenna; living by what they believed in their hearts. Christain nations preventing those in need from crossing borders is a digusting and ubiquitous sight; goods travel with more freedom. Gossip some more; whom else is bad and should be ignored? Me?
@@CourtesyPhone I can tell you that being surrounded by those who ignore what incoherence feels like, instead of those who've learned what coherence feels like, profoundly challenges one's will to continue.
The brain has been a comfort finder and is just now in us becoming a coherence detector. The brain is not a computer, it's a feeling machine; *feel it* !
@M B And, we are taught early how to feel about this or that, or how not to feel with "us" or "them". ... Yeah; very much a communal exercise; a process of transmutation. ... Ah, to be like children, eh?😂🍻
In the years 12 to 25 the frontal lobe must learn how to guide the limbic(feeling) part of the brain towards successful maintenance of the species. In sustainable human societies, this is done with the guidance of elders. “The New World Order” is leading to chaos and human extinction, now even atheist Leftists like Bari Weiss are realizing.
@@anastunya Wellll..., it must guide the individial toward a meaningful and/or comfortable position in community. It is culture that sustains community. Neither the individual nor the community cares one whit about the species.
This might be oversimplifying it...but everything in reality scales up to an identity at the of the day. Behind any idea, pattern, principle, virtue, etc...there's an "organic" intelligence at the source of it.
@@romeisburning6739 In the world. Everything you see in the world is a construct in your mind(This doesn't mean you arbitrarily produce them; they're given to you by the world).There is no fine line between the material and the immaterial as the material is also a mental construct.
@@jedicharls im just checking back,, and it seems like UA-cam erased my original reply. It's been doing that when I comment on certain topics. Let me if I can remember my initial reply. Lol well another way of describing scaling up would be transcending in levels of importance or value. The beginning and ending of all things is caused by an identity. A person. You see, the world contains a lot of details...an innumerable amount of facts that go down to the quantum. We experience the world through symbolism..in fact that's how our consciousness works. Our consciousness condenses all the facts that are in the world into meaning. Or rather, facts scales up into meaning. Imagine the bottom of a mountain....the closer you get to the peak of the mountain everything condenses. Even when we look at something as simple as a nail, or a pencil, those objects our filled with an innumerable amount of details down to the quantum level. But how consciousness unifies the facts into meaning in order for us to give it an identity or to identify it in the 1st place. What helped me realize this is that reality is more so hiecharcal in nature. There's Heaven(meaning/quality/the immaterial/Identity) from above(not in a geographical sense), and there's Earth(facts/quantity/the material/Information) from below. That is the basic structure of reality. This hierarchical structure reaches all levels of reality(quantum, individual, interpersonal, communal, cosmic and spiritual). Ultimately reaching all the way to the top(not in a geographical sense) to the Infinite(The Trinity/God) which is an identity. One can say God is the very source of all identities. These are ancient and yet very much relevant way of looking at reality. Nowadays in our modern times, most people see reality through a more Earthly(facts/quantity) aspect, instead of BOTH a Heavenly(meaning/quality) and Earthly aspect.
You test the "spirits" (or spiritual experiences) against the word of God, period. 1 John 4, 1 Thessalonians 5:21. If they, or it, doesn't jive with the scripture, it's deception.
This is precisely it. All spiritual experiences I am now skeptical of the intent behind them, and I seek the Truth within them rather than take them for Truth. Even a deception will use Truth to lure you. IDK. I've also seen and felt the dark side of it too, and when you see and experience some of that, you become a lot more skeptical to these experiences. It's sad that people do follow these things down the paths that they do. Another thing that, may or may not be a good test, but so far it seems to work, is that for bad spiritual experiences, there's this sort of "underwater" feeling I associate with them. My favorite experience I had that seems to be the most positive one is where I dreamt that I was looking out at my city and to a lesser extent, the world, and I saw everyone as an infinitely precious shard of light. The feeling of love was so gentle and profound, and truly as perfect a feeling as I could understand. I did not feel as though I was underwater then. I felt as though I was in communion with God, and this, to me, struck me as a gift to welcome me back out of my materialistic phase. But I've had many other experiences that were odd, or felt kind of alright in some way, that kind of thing. And, following those felt less correct. Still having my rational way of thinking intact, I think one of the things that always struck me is how people seem to truly have these rather striking spiritual experiences, and yet, the aims and messages of so many of them are contradictory. This, in my view, is speaks to the array of "off" experiences. In my view, one cannot gain a full spiritual grasp through mysticism alone. There are also a few intensely beautiful experiences I've had, and then I'll have some of these other spiritual experiences, and they'll be cool in their own way, but they often carry that underwater vibe and don't measure up to the beauty that I've experienced in the brightest experiences, a beauty that truly puts one at ease. Heh. Now I suspect many a cult leader isn't just an atheist/nonbeliever masquerading as a leader, but rather, someone who is drinking spiritual poison and using that poison to mislead others.
I feel like some bad habits like cocaine are a bit more obvious to see, but how does one go about discerning more generally between the good and the bad?
Be in silence. When you enter stillness, it becomes much easier to see your bad habits. The deeper the stillness, the deeper the habits you'll encounter. Pray, go on retreats, celebrate mass. This is really what they mean when they are talking about integrating spiritual experiences. From the perspective of the numinous, the mundane stands out in bold relief.
Only God, even just a concept of "there's someone/something who commanded me and will judge me" which commandments are "uncreated" (i.e meta laws that exceeds anything created, that nothing created can be higher in hierarchy value) If there is no "God" idea, i.e not something above everything, then it's just ungrounded, all right and wrongs are not grounded, you may change your mind any time, probably completely abandoning what you previously held as right or.wrong, and with that coming inevitable depression or falling into animalistic/robotic state where you stop thinking, because - you know - when you feel you're doing something wrong you get bad feeling, and imagine knowing that there's no objectively good or bad, you must be either an animal left out of free choice, or constantly get massive doses of bad feeling, and loose motivation to live really, when there's no good or bad, what will make you feel any accomplishment in life, whatever you do is just meaningless, complete meaninglessness, so many reasons to not have a life then... Because in reality we have a free choice, and, I just realized, without choosing between good or bad - there is no free choice, no free will at all, wow, that means there is an objective truth, because otherwise - if we can think and not just give in to instincts like animals - we as a thinking beings constantly choose between good or bad, better or worse, good and evil (in Orthodox understanding sin = missing from point, i.e it means wrong, being wrong or doing wrong, so really bad=evil, but on steroids, not doing correct thing, and it's not a separate entity - evil is not a separate entity from bad, wrong, it's just I guess a lower point from scale, and that's exactly how fall of Angels are described in the Bible, evil isn't presumed as a separate entity (nor it is called so) and in fact fall of angels are described as "they made wrong decision" i.e just fell off from the right track) And it all comes to full circle, writing this helped me a lot, and I hope it did help you too Without supernatural, meta level, objective good or bad which can not by any possible way be changed - there's no good or bad and no reason to follow really So without superethics there's no ethics at all, just human construct or man made construct is superimposed onto you, and - you know, a man wants to break free from chains in general whenever that man realizes he has those chains A person must be slave of God, with that that person is free in this world, only that person is a free man (and I forgot why, it came to my mind that's why I even mentioned that a person must be slave of God)
The word for false spiritual experience is "deceived". Search for what is true. That voice in your head right now telling you where truth is, is Spirit.
After years of struggling with an addiction to smoking I was able to quit it overnight once I realized (not just thought but understood) that the voice telling me to smoke wasn't me. At the time I had recently watched Jordan Peterson talking about dragons so everytime the voice showed up I just thought to myself "there goes the dragon again" and in a few weeks it completely stopped telling me to smoke
That’s a new way of looking at battling addictive behaviors for me. I’ll have to try that out. Thanks.
In case of sinful passions it's like recognizing an actual enemy nearby, who seems like your close friend (or lover), who you trust and allow to be very close to you and influence you. But this enemy actually wants you dead, it wants to separate you from the good, from God, so you would voluntarily die forever and take others with you. It has no mercy.
This interview clip compelled me to repent of a particular self-destructive pattern of behavior and ask God to free me and my desires from enslavement to it. Your videos are informative, and although I wrestle with a lot of it, they're helpful in many other important ways as well.
Just reading this made me smile.
God bless you, Brother.
I had quite a few ‘spiritual’ experiences all the way to outright full on ‘manifestation’. At work, seeing a demon. That’s the most bombastic one. Instead of being all ‘wow! I can’t believe it! I must be special!’ I got back to the station and prayed for that house and person living there.
More people need to adopt an understanding that these experiences used to be quite normal. And for a large part of the world they still are normal. It’s *our* culture that treats these as abnormal.
They are what they are. A part of the embedded universe you live in. Pray and move on
Edit: as I’ve gotten older I think the ‘specialness’ people feel is the hook. I used to. I see them now as moments God allows. And if you understand Christianity is the pen-ultimate ‘tech’ to deal with nasties, it can’t help but draw you deeper into faith and prayer.
Orthodoxy has a whole battery of prayers for this stuff. God bless.
Exactly appealing to people's pride is something.
Note transcript from video: Let’s say you’re addicted to something, and you know it’s an addiction because you can’t control it, and it kind of pulls you, that’s a principality, it’s a pattern in reality, that is cosmic - its cosmic because you’re not the only person with that addiction, it’s an actual real pattern that exists in the world, in which you are participating, and that you are not only participating in but that by engaging in these bad habits and bad behaviours, you are feeding it. You’re sacrificing your time and your attention to these patterns, and you’re making it stronger in the world, because you’re like a branch for it, a body for it, a tool for it to appear in the world. That’s a demon, and you can be possessed by it, and you can be a tool for it to spread in the world.
I recommend "the discernment of spirits" (for the first week or second, depending on where you are in life) by Saint Ignatius Loyola.
I love the sentiment, "you should ignore all spiritual experiences", but I take it to mean "don't reach conclusions about them". Willful ignorance is not usually helpful! That buried curiosity may become a pea beneath your library. I don't quite understand the orthodox life, but I appreciate its stabilizing presence. I think women have a lot to teach men about how to become comfortable with different ways of being ("flirt mode", etc), but for now that description just sounds like, "don't bring that into my life, it makes me uncomfortable". And the church acts as a barrier against that "chaos", which belongs to the perceiver, not necessarily the perceived. The unconditional love of God, I think, exists precisely because idiosyncrasy is precious. Especially as a person individuates, integrates, hones ones idiosyncrasies. Infinite thanks to you, Jonathan, for bringing pattern & myth into the Christian conversation!
Praise be thee, mr. Pageau, for being our community in the age of disconnect.
Jonathan, you should create a Christian journal like with your explanation of principalities and then prompts for personal reflections
I'm a big fan of NDE testimonials and research, but this discussion was a LONG TIME COMING and, ironically, actually agrees with one of my favourite esoteric philosophers if all time (the Canadian) Manley P Hall and also the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
I love it.
I am concerned with the aesthetic experience as an artist. Beauty and Truth are inseparable.
I absolutely went through that whole phase too. Although I've always had a knack for spiritual matters I've recently realised that I don't seem able to shake off my materialism. I still have the feeling that everything comes down to matter and I can't see how spiritual matters aren't just in our imagination. I wonder if anyone else has that problem?
I've had a gradual shift over years into seeing that most things around us are processes that require material. For example combustion is a process and exist as such, but doesn't come about until it's material conditions are met. So in a sense the process is the "real" thing, and the material just allows it to come into existence. I don't know if this makes any sense, but it's something I suppose.
I would highly encourage you to go to an orthodox church near you, and attend a liturgy. When you go, ask God to reveal Himself to you, with full earnestness. And see what happens when you truly experience God Himself. Peace be with you friend.
Genuine question: Is our imagination material?
@@whatsinameme5258 Maybe you could say so, if you consider it just neurons firing in our brains. But I've come to realise that it just doesn't really matter haha.
Late reply, but have you read Stephen Freeman's book, Everywhere Present? It helps dispel some of the ideas of God as an "extra" in the universe who lives "upstairs" and is disconnected from the everyday world. Also C.S Lewis' Miracles might be helpful.
Alternatively, Viktor Frankl's book "Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning" has a good chapter on the transcendent quality of conscience (and it ties into the idea of God as the Ground of Being in Tillich's terms), and that really was one of the first books to set me off on my journey to Christianity. It might help you see a bit more "how" God and the spiritual tie in with our experienced world.
Edit: If you're after some books to dispel materialist presuppositions, however, I'd recommend "The Science Delusion" by Merlin Sheldrake, along with "Believing Is Seeing" by Michael Guillen (especially that last one). They're both very readable. Edward Feser's "The Last Superstition" is a very good (but very angry!) book that contrasts our modern mechanistic view of the world with the ancient teleological view of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.
Oh man, when you really understand this, you can see how many things you’re actually influenced by.
Spiritual reality is something crazy, what I find most amazing Is the ritual Time, like the way the Liturgical calendar and the events in the world Fit together. "Synchronicities" and anniversaries, names and places, it all seems to explain each other and embody a higher order.
This gets me to think of a debate within Western Rite Orthodoxy between the ROCOR and Antiochian Vicariate, regarding whether or not Rome still had some good and Orthodox-compatible ideas AFTER 1054, such as the Rosary. ROCORWR says no, anything more recent then Pater Nostra beads is “Prelest” that over-stimulates the imagination. AVWR disagrees, saying several things from 1054-1549 are salvageable for Orthodox use.
My mother, who is a deeply visual person, has always prayed the rosary, but rosary or not, has never not been able to visualize what she’s praying about, it’s just how she’s built. Short of being personally trained for years by some Hysicast expert, what is she supposed to do about this? “Not visualizing” while meditating is so alien to her that she honestly has no idea what the argument derived from the Desert Fathers even means.
I'm not sure what visualization debate is about, but not visualization I think could be about praying staying in head vs communicating - visualization maybe means fantasy you know?
Idk
I’ve been a recovering catholic since 1974 and still can’t pray properly. RC ingrains the young brain in meaningless rote prayer. Tells them there’s something wrong with them if the rosary isn’t helping. Brainwashed RCs think if they pray the rosary better, the Pope will stop enabling perversion. Sad.
I would read what Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov has to say about imaginative prayer.
Prelest gets used a cudgel to hit catholics with by "orthobro"/convertodox types. They'll say Fatma was prelest but the fire of the orthodox is totally legit. So my hackles raise when I see this. Discernment is needed, yes. But discernment is not exclusive to orthodox. There is a reason why the catholic church questions things like Međugorje, Things have to pass a smell test with us too.
That's not what Orthodox say, we say to triple check wherever they are real and wherever they are coming from good or evil
Jonathan, can you please talk about spiritual delusion as shown on the series Midnight Mass? Lots to unpack there. I’m not sure if a series like that is helpful or harmful from a spiritual perspective.
Jesus represents the union of opposites, flesh and spirit, he is the incarnation. All the spiritual experiences in the world mean nothing if they are not embodied through our actions!!
Love is the embodiment of divine knowledge.
Many people have so called spiritual experiences, however, in their actions you can see that their body is “hosting” a different spirit...
1 John “no one who remains in him sins; no one who sins has seen him or knows him”
A good example of prelest is Alan watts. He was deceived and thought he knew god through spiritual experiences, but he was really a depressed alcoholic who misled many down the path of deception.
It seems many "spiritual gurus" end up in the path of self destruction or never feeling fulfilled by the end of their lives. (speaking generally here.)
I learned a lot from Allan Watts, but it concerned me when I heard he died as an alcoholic or when he was supporting suicide.
That you think these are opposites means you're caught into trap of False Dialectics, that the west, and the (far) east for that matter, is guilty of being constantly in
Alan Watts shared his opinion, like Terence McKenna; living by what they believed in their hearts. Christain nations preventing those in need from crossing borders is a digusting and ubiquitous sight; goods travel with more freedom.
Gossip some more; whom else is bad and should be ignored? Me?
@@CourtesyPhone I can tell you that being surrounded by those who ignore what incoherence feels like, instead of those who've learned what coherence feels like, profoundly challenges one's will to continue.
There is a "normal" meditative experience that lasts one full week and many many outlyers. Christ is the full week experience.
So in short, don't be Anakin. Don't dwell on your experiences, they make you bring them to life. Interesting.
The brain has been a comfort finder and is just now in us becoming a coherence detector. The brain is not a computer, it's a feeling machine; *feel it* !
@M B And, we are taught early how to feel about this or that, or how not to feel with "us" or "them". ... Yeah; very much a communal exercise; a process of transmutation. ... Ah, to be like children, eh?😂🍻
In the years 12 to 25 the frontal lobe must learn how to guide the limbic(feeling) part of the brain towards successful maintenance of the species. In sustainable human societies, this is done with the guidance of elders. “The New World Order” is leading to chaos and human extinction, now even atheist Leftists like Bari Weiss are realizing.
@@anastunya Wellll..., it must guide the individial toward a meaningful and/or comfortable position in community. It is culture that sustains community. Neither the individual nor the community cares one whit about the species.
So, instead of instinctual compulsions that one must learn to control; there are demons that others expose us to? WAKE UP!!!
I honestly do not understand why they assume these patterns, "principalities", are personal or conscious.
This might be oversimplifying it...but everything in reality scales up to an identity at the of the day. Behind any idea, pattern, principle, virtue, etc...there's an "organic" intelligence at the source of it.
@@uchechukwuibeji5532 what does that mean that everything "scales up" to an "identity"? What is an identity? A personality? A consciousness?
Where exactly are immaterial ideas and concepts and patterns held except in a mind?
@@romeisburning6739 In the world. Everything you see in the world is a construct in your mind(This doesn't mean you arbitrarily produce them; they're given to you by the world).There is no fine line between the material and the immaterial as the material is also a mental construct.
@@jedicharls im just checking back,, and it seems like UA-cam erased my original reply. It's been doing that when I comment on certain topics. Let me if I can remember my initial reply. Lol
well another way of describing scaling up would be transcending in levels of importance or value. The beginning and ending of all things is caused by an identity. A person.
You see, the world contains a lot of details...an innumerable amount of facts that go down to the quantum. We experience the world through symbolism..in fact that's how our consciousness works. Our consciousness condenses all the facts that are in the world into meaning. Or rather, facts scales up into meaning. Imagine the bottom of a mountain....the closer you get to the peak of the mountain everything condenses. Even when we look at something as simple as a nail, or a pencil, those objects our filled with an innumerable amount of details down to the quantum level. But how consciousness unifies the facts into meaning in order for us to give it an identity or to identify it in the 1st place.
What helped me realize this is that reality is more so hiecharcal in nature. There's Heaven(meaning/quality/the immaterial/Identity) from above(not in a geographical sense), and there's Earth(facts/quantity/the material/Information) from below. That is the basic structure of reality. This hierarchical structure reaches all levels of reality(quantum, individual, interpersonal, communal, cosmic and spiritual). Ultimately reaching all the way to the top(not in a geographical sense) to the Infinite(The Trinity/God) which is an identity. One can say God is the very source of all identities.
These are ancient and yet very much relevant way of looking at reality. Nowadays in our modern times, most people see reality through a more Earthly(facts/quantity) aspect, instead of BOTH a Heavenly(meaning/quality) and Earthly aspect.
You test the "spirits" (or spiritual experiences) against the word of God, period. 1 John 4, 1 Thessalonians 5:21.
If they, or it, doesn't jive with the scripture, it's deception.
This is precisely it. All spiritual experiences I am now skeptical of the intent behind them, and I seek the Truth within them rather than take them for Truth.
Even a deception will use Truth to lure you.
IDK. I've also seen and felt the dark side of it too, and when you see and experience some of that, you become a lot more skeptical to these experiences.
It's sad that people do follow these things down the paths that they do.
Another thing that, may or may not be a good test, but so far it seems to work, is that for bad spiritual experiences, there's this sort of "underwater" feeling I associate with them.
My favorite experience I had that seems to be the most positive one is where I dreamt that I was looking out at my city and to a lesser extent, the world, and I saw everyone as an infinitely precious shard of light. The feeling of love was so gentle and profound, and truly as perfect a feeling as I could understand.
I did not feel as though I was underwater then. I felt as though I was in communion with God, and this, to me, struck me as a gift to welcome me back out of my materialistic phase.
But I've had many other experiences that were odd, or felt kind of alright in some way, that kind of thing. And, following those felt less correct.
Still having my rational way of thinking intact, I think one of the things that always struck me is how people seem to truly have these rather striking spiritual experiences, and yet, the aims and messages of so many of them are contradictory.
This, in my view, is speaks to the array of "off" experiences. In my view, one cannot gain a full spiritual grasp through mysticism alone.
There are also a few intensely beautiful experiences I've had, and then I'll have some of these other spiritual experiences, and they'll be cool in their own way, but they often carry that underwater vibe and don't measure up to the beauty that I've experienced in the brightest experiences, a beauty that truly puts one at ease.
Heh. Now I suspect many a cult leader isn't just an atheist/nonbeliever masquerading as a leader, but rather, someone who is drinking spiritual poison and using that poison to mislead others.
I feel like some bad habits like cocaine are a bit more obvious to see, but how does one go about discerning more generally between the good and the bad?
if its drawing you closer to god and helping you understand and keep his commandments its good, if its anything else its bad.
Be in silence. When you enter stillness, it becomes much easier to see your bad habits. The deeper the stillness, the deeper the habits you'll encounter. Pray, go on retreats, celebrate mass. This is really what they mean when they are talking about integrating spiritual experiences. From the perspective of the numinous, the mundane stands out in bold relief.
Only God, even just a concept of "there's someone/something who commanded me and will judge me" which commandments are "uncreated" (i.e meta laws that exceeds anything created, that nothing created can be higher in hierarchy value)
If there is no "God" idea, i.e not something above everything, then it's just ungrounded, all right and wrongs are not grounded, you may change your mind any time, probably completely abandoning what you previously held as right or.wrong, and with that coming inevitable depression or falling into animalistic/robotic state where you stop thinking, because - you know - when you feel you're doing something wrong you get bad feeling, and imagine knowing that there's no objectively good or bad, you must be either an animal left out of free choice, or constantly get massive doses of bad feeling, and loose motivation to live really, when there's no good or bad, what will make you feel any accomplishment in life, whatever you do is just meaningless, complete meaninglessness, so many reasons to not have a life then...
Because in reality we have a free choice, and, I just realized, without choosing between good or bad - there is no free choice, no free will at all, wow, that means there is an objective truth, because otherwise - if we can think and not just give in to instincts like animals - we as a thinking beings constantly choose between good or bad, better or worse, good and evil (in Orthodox understanding sin = missing from point, i.e it means wrong, being wrong or doing wrong, so really bad=evil, but on steroids, not doing correct thing, and it's not a separate entity - evil is not a separate entity from bad, wrong, it's just I guess a lower point from scale, and that's exactly how fall of Angels are described in the Bible, evil isn't presumed as a separate entity (nor it is called so) and in fact fall of angels are described as "they made wrong decision" i.e just fell off from the right track)
And it all comes to full circle, writing this helped me a lot, and I hope it did help you too
Without supernatural, meta level, objective good or bad which can not by any possible way be changed - there's no good or bad and no reason to follow really
So without superethics there's no ethics at all, just human construct or man made construct is superimposed onto you, and - you know, a man wants to break free from chains in general whenever that man realizes he has those chains
A person must be slave of God, with that that person is free in this world, only that person is a free man (and I forgot why, it came to my mind that's why I even mentioned that a person must be slave of God)
Haha a "ghostbuster mentality"
The reason they say to ignore is so they can maintain power! They own truth right now and, that's nonsense!
The word for false spiritual experience is
"deceived". Search for what is true. That voice in your head right now telling you where truth is, is Spirit.
Or yourself. Or a demon. Or advertisers. Or a charismatic other. Or. Or. Or.
@@rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr1 get a life
Men. Cross yourself every morning.