Chris Weimer

He doesn't think he knows what he is talking about, nor does he think he should be listened to. He does it for his own reasons, at least that's what he maintained before. After these years, I've just learned to ignore him.

Chili

Except that I am not an American.

Chili

Are you here to learn something after fourty years of studying the bible and being a good Christian? Is that what it takes for you to walk away from it all?

Yes, I am here to learn and I enjoy being here because religion doesn't owe me anything.

gstafleu

Hey folks, let's cut my fellow-Canadian some slack here. I always enjoy his posts, even though I often don't understand them. But then that's pretty well a religious tradition, isn't it? And the bible does have to do with religion.

Nevertheless, I agree with the implicit (I assume) suggestions that Chili could be a bit more explicit at times, that would probably lead to interesting discussions. For example:

In these days of scientific prevalence that is counter-intuitive for most people. It would no doubt help if you explained with for-dummies clarity and simplicity what you mean here by "virgin," "rebirth" and "natural."
Similarly, why do you equate a Nazarene with Sotapanna and Sotapanna with purgatory. Once you do that maybe us dummies will clue in why Islam and Protestantism take up such limping second places in the race to understanding.

Gerard Stafleu

Chili

The virgin birth must be juxtaposed with a non-virgin birth which in John 1:13 is called from carnal desire instead of God. My NAB is very clear on this: . . . who were begotten not by blood, nor by carnal desire, nor by man's willing it, but by God. So we are talking rebirth here that can be from above and from below, if you like that better. From above is from God via the virgin and from below is from carnal desire via Eve who is the eager temple tramp in our conscious mind here now willing to pose for the occasion. In the real world this would be like a thief in the night via the virgin, and as a spectacular event on the evangelists stage via the temple tramp.

I can add here that it is a 666 event that stands for midnight, midwinter and midlife to say that it is a natural event that happens to us when we are in the darkest point of our life, which is also the end of our world because that is when and where we turn around and go the other way (metanoia).

It is natural because metamorphosis is a natural event and menopauze is the proper time for this event to take place (between 38 and 45 but 38 seems to be the right time to become a stream entrant, purgatorain or Galilean).

I like the virgin image best because the woman was taken from man to be his dowry in betrothal, but is not ours to be his until man is ready to receive and for this he must be "beyond theology" or "beyond surrender" and therefore in the very heart of darkness or in the very depth of dispair. In America this never happens because long before the believer is fully embodied in his own cocoon a 'vulture' will come along and rip this immature child from its mother's womb (rebirth from below).

The virginity of this woman is maintained by the integrity of the believer against the curiosity of Eve who is always on the lookout to please the ego but here now is haggard and therefore passive (eg. yields to the tugging by the evangelist).

So yes, the word virgin is a metaphor but so is above and below and even the word God . . . because metamorphosis takes place in other animals without the concept God.We enter the race when we are born again and become a 'stream entrant' so we will complete this race that takes place in Purgatory or Galilee where we have exposure to bind and loose (eg. the wolf nursing the lamb). At night we return to Bethany where we 'contemplate our day and receive in the dark.'

Islamites and Protestants thrive on spiritual fornication which really is the premature awakening of the inner child. As a result will they be severed from Christ and no longer in God's favor as self righteous religious rationalists (we call them fundies).

Please know that not all Protestant religions are wrong here but if metamorposis is a mystery, a mystery religion is required to innitiate it. I am just talking extremes here and not suggesting that Protestants are 'bad' people.

Chili

Protestant evangelists do not know 'what' they are doing but only know 'that' they are doing somthing that works [for them] and can actually make it stick in the mind of the believer. The only unknown stage of development for adults is metamorphosis which is native to man and is our most basic [god-given] right to reach sometime later in life. Here then, the so called the 'army of god' is trying to fornicate that stage long before its own time and thereby preventing the normal or natural way of spiritual development (Songs 2:7 tells us not to awaken divine love before its own time).

gstafleu

We at least seem to be thinking about the same things, occasionally , see this post. I think I agree with your view of fundies, but:
I wonder if they (the fundie type Protestants and Islamists, and, for that matter, perhaps the fundamentalist Catholics as well) succeed in any awakening of the inner child. Isn't it more likely they just get stuck in the screening myth?

Now as for the rebirth, as you can see from the post I referenced above I had until now not though it necessary to connect a virgin motif with it: the normal self-generated--with a little help from your friends--rebirth will do. Having said that, a self generated birth can of course be seen to entail the notion of virginity. To put it differently, I put the divinity inside the human being, and equate it with it. Do you maintain an external divinity (somehow I don't think so)? My suggestion is that John 3 may contraindicate this.

666?

Ah yes, Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita (Midway in the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost.) If Dante could have bought a Harley Davidson, would he have bothered with divine comedy?

Beyond theology, yes, but beyond surrender? I'm not too fond of the Virgin, not because of the Virgin per se I think (I like how you present it), but more because it makes it too easy to replace the duality of the Mother and the Seductress with that of the Madonna and the Whore. The Whore is, certainly in our cultural context, too easily seen as almost completely negative. A positive view is of course possible, but is probably best to start with Mother and the Seductress and leave the extreme for later. For example "The virginity of this woman is maintained by the integrity of the believer against the curiosity of Eve who is always on the lookout to please the ego." Wouldn't it be better to make this gender neutral?

Here is another take on it. In Genesis 2, God splits Man from Woman. After that Anthropos (lacking an English word for this) is split from its true nature, and guess who gets blamed. This is the start of the old covenant. The new covenant offers a chance to reunite the Man and Woman, and Anthropos and its true nature, but only once all involved are ready. If they are not yet ready any (carnal) union is imperfect and in a sense unreal, and in that sense both man and woman would indeed remain virgins until metamorphosis, both with respect to Man-Woman interaction and with respect to Anthropos and his/her nature. The problem I have with the "in the beginning" part of this is that it is too easy to see Woman as the culprit, not just in the screening myth but even beyond.

Having written this, I realize one could equate Man-Woman with Anthropos-Nature--but which part with which. That might take us into limo territory anyway. Plus I'm not all that comfortable with the equation of eating from the tree of knowledge and separation from one's nature anyway.

And so it can, I would suggest, in human beings... depending on one's definition of God, of course.

Gerard Stafleu

Chili

For sure, there are lots of bad Catholics in this sense but probably only in America where it has become a defense mechanism against prawling wolves (as I would call them).

Just watch Benny Hinn in action and surely you must have heard them sing "I have seen the light." We have one neighbor boy who ended up in a mental institution about a year after he got zapped by an evangelist and I am sure that there are many more like him. One must also wonder where these charismatics get there zeal and devotion to leave whatever they are doing and go jump for Jesus. What about all these deconversion programs? As Catholic we just stay home and quite going to church without any further ado because we have nothing invested in it nor do we miss anything of we do not go. It is just a tradition with no strings attached . . . "until we are called and fall in the hands of the living God," as they say.

I have no trouble with John 3:16 wherein we must be born again from God as opposed to carnal desire that this same John explains in Jn.1:13.

No, there is no external divinity after we become "son of man" ourself. Until then there seems to be an external divinity because we live beside ourself. IOW we are the outsider and God is really us and we are God but never realized this [as of yet].

Leave 666 out iof this for now.I never read Dante but I liked Maric Lorca on this. Yes, beyond surrender because the very 'I' (as in "I surrender all") must itself be surrendered. Hence the murmer "abba father" or Woodworth's "timely uttering" (Intimations of Immortality)

I know, Eve or Magdalene is greatly to be admired and a vivid Eve is what makes life interesting and worth living. She is called Valeria in Coriolanus and that stands for 'valor' which is exactly the role she played (Casca is another one).

No, she is female and female only or at least wants to be female and not at all like Lady Macbeth who hath not name but Lady Macbeth to make this warped no-name gender identity known. I love her and so should we all.

Must go for now.

Chili

That should be Garcia Lorca in my previous post.

There is no God to split anything.

Woman is the womb of man that contains the essence (einai) of the being (to on) and there is only one of those (no plural for einai) because it contains our very own soul also called our Thousand Year Reign.

God is 'done' with the first cause (or he would be first and second) and so it is Lord God who divides the created image wherein we are both male-and-female into male or female (remember here that our sexuality is an illusion or a phantasm). Every male and every female will have their own essence (that I called woman) wherein lies their divine or heavenly nature since man is God, but, without an essence of his own (because God has no existence of being) God has no nature of his own . . . werefore here now in the flip side woman has no identity of her own since she was taken from man to be his woman (his essence). So now, the essence of God is woman but the identity of woman is man . . . and that makes a good match indeed but also means that the woman is our "gate to heaven" (as in the Loretta Litany).

That of course is good and makes male and female equal in the eyes of God since each one has their own identity wherein they have their own divine lineage wherein they are omniscient (the Natives call this "Aboriginal Heritage" that we do not seem to recognize).

I see what you are saying but I do not agree with the split. Each one is fully man in the divine sense of the word 'man' but I don think that the woman ever gets crucified so she can not ascend to be in the upper room without an identity of her own (the woman is assumend and crowned queen of heaven and earth to make him king). IOW without the Coronation heaven is a void.

The fall of man was the best thing that ever happened to him and I give full credit to females to have made man what he is today. God (man) may have been the formal cause of it but they are the efficient cause and that is why dominion is ours today.

The fall of Anthropos (man) was the creation of his ego or self awareness and that is made known in the shame/no-shame distinction made between Gen.2:25 and Gen.3:7. This ego was called Adam and the serpent became Eve (Magdalene) in the TOK and the woman became Mary in the TOL who from there saw that the TOK was good for gaining goodies. Mary indeed is the greater serpent that swallows the lesser serpent in the end when John took his mother under his care because Mary was the light of Magdalene for whom alone the light of common day does not exist. Hence, it was dark when the ego was crucified without Mary theotokos around.