leyline

carol

yes we have a lot of common ground between us.

"The freedom that exists today to speak your heretical mind without the threat of physical and/or psychological harm is no small thing. "

i value this very highly. Much more highly than standing up for my beliefs and risking physical torture. I have such admiration for people who will do that, even if i completely disagree with what they believe.

Carol Massey

A little different direction leyline, but here's an interesting thing I've noticed, (like the ark story) all things are created in pairs, a 'good' thing comes into being with its 'evil' counterpart...

Any thoughts 'bout that?

Til later, Carol

leyline

carol

hmm......

so which is evil, the male or the female?

Carol Massey

I set myself up for that one for sure!

I learn as I go!

Revision: Male/female Positive/Negative Good/Bad Light/Dark Heaven/Hell.....

That's better.

Now! For the rest of the story:

The flood represents the unconscious. Creation comes from the unconscious and enters the world of matter in pairs. No getting 'round that. If we create one, it's opposite comes into being along with it.

Gotta go to work now, so I'm checking out for a while!

(Thank you Paul Harvey!)

leyline

Well I certainly do not want to restrict this thread to a particular angle and I am not pursuing a particular conclusion.

That we separate the world into polarities and dualisms I recognise. Of course the particular way of doing it is individual and cultural, and I suppose physicality and spirituality can be seen as polarities themselves. I didn’t consciously do that. Maybe emotional would agree with respect to the physical and astral body?

Similarly for the conscious and the unconscious maybe, as light cannot be without darkness. I suppose it depends whether we see darkness as a lack of light, and evil as a lack of good, as compared to two complementary forces in themselves. With respect to emotion and reason I do see them as different in themselves. Ie I do not see reason as a lack of emotion or emotion as a lack of reason in terms of definition. But with light I suppose darkness could be defined as a lack of light.

Physicality and spirituality. Can they exist separately? Hmmmm…………. Well gender might be a good aspect to consider. Is the masculine both a different spirituality and physicality to the feminine??? (I am not assuming that females are without masculinity and males without femininity. Quite the opposite as astrology teaches. And besides, Pisces is the most feminine sign. )

emotional

Good/evil dichotomy is a legacy of the Zarathustrian religion, whence it came to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Good/evil dualism is an opposing dualism, whereas a safer dualism may be a complementary dualism, such as hot/cold. See:

When I say there is a great gulf fixed between matter and spirit, or between creature and Creator, I'm not saying the one is good and the other is evil. I'm just stating the fact of separation. It is a fact that, while in the material body, mankind cannot see God. Spiritual experiences like Isaiah 6 must take place outside the body.

leyline

emotional

i thought your distinction between opposite dualism and complementary dualism was interesting, but i couldn't tell which was which in the examples you gave.

eg since you seperate the physical from the spritual, which type of dualism do you recognise it as?

I personally would not seperate the two although i think they can become seperated in various ways within the understanding of a person.

I am interested in if you think that the spirituality of femininity is different to the spirituality of masculinity, if you recognise them at all in that context. After all there are physical differences.

Personally i suppose i do believe that femininity does have a different spirituality to masculinity. Its difficult to define though.

emotional

It's a contrastive dualism, but that doesn't mean I buy into the Gnostic doctrine of "spirit is good, matter is evil". For the embryo there is a great gulf fixed between his inner world (the womb) and outside world, and so too for the material person with regard to the spirit worlds.



I believe the separation is real. People don't have mystic visions unless they switch off their material cognition, lay away the veil of the physical body. Even the Bible, perverse as it may be, hints to this fact: "there shall no man see me and live" - meaning that one has to have an Out-of-Body Experience in order to have a vision of God or His angels.



Oh, I really don't know. I haven't done research about the subject. I suppose, since the astral body is a duplicate of the material body, that spirits are divided into sexes just like material people are. I believe in non-human animal spirits too, so it's not so far-fetched that there should be male humans and female humans as spirits as well.

leyline

yes interesting

i like the idea of contrastive dualism, and i feel that the masculine and feminine are like that, just as the rational and the emotional are.

I tend to think of them as forces though, that have different emphasis in each of us. Thus some people are more rational than emotional, physical than spiritual, masculine than feminine..... but very few are without all of them.

We just haven't got time to be skillful at all of them at once....... unless we are jugglers.

having said that maybe i am emphasising the masculine. The feminine doesn't seem to have much trouble doing more than one thing at a time. lol

The physicality of pregnancy and childbirth surely has a spiritual dimension though, just as a father has his? I don't see it as just biology devoid of spirit.

emotional

Funny, I'm a male, a straight male, yet I'm more emotional than rational. And my sister is very rational. That's at least one family where the "male=rational, female=emotional" doesn't work.



I'm capable of rational and critical thinking, but where the question of death is concerned, I'm so afraid of the rational answer (that there is no life after death) that I have made a conscious, wilful decision to suspend rational thought.

Of great significance is that both partners scream out God's name when the orgasm comes. Yes, there certainly is a spiritual dimension to sexuality Oh, as long as sex is had with mutual love, it is no sin. It's pornography, which makes sex a mechanical and unloving endeavour, that's so sinful in my eyes. There's nothing godly about, for instance, the whorehouse heaven of Islam.