The understanding of the Bible from a surface based perspective is like any other surface based understanding in that it merely serves to validate surface based identity. When the identification with the surface identity breaks down or begins to disintegrate, a more inclusive awareness rises through the experience of being alive. In all times and cultures there are stepping stones, bridges and transitional aids that serve the re-awakening of being to its true nature - which is always and already true - but had been seen through a glass darkly; through the definition structures of thought and belief that filter and distort the experience of pure awareness or being - into a polarised play of apparently conflicting forces. I am writing in the heart and I rest in the meaning that is in my heart to share. Words can and will be given meanings what not intended - in a mind that is inclined to determine meanings rather than discern meaning. True authority does not use external props. Jesus' way is not idolatry of external specialness - but a living example for our own heart to recognize regardless of outer religion. Truth is to be realised through our own willingness and acceptance and not determined by talk or thought - or our vanity becomes insanity.
Comment: I fully agree. But you have to find a less didactic way of putting it if you hope to convince the Atheists and agnostics here or even to help them understand it.
Reply:
I dont seek to persuade or convince anyone here. Your mind is yours to engage or to release to serve a greater trust - but not mine to manipulate or coerce. I like good company - and look forward to being understood, but the love in a shared willingness to honour and value life doesn't wait on being understood in concept - but only of finding welcome.
Is there a need for fresh ways of speaking of things that cant really be spoken - usually associated with spirituality and religion? Fresh ways start from fresh foundations and it is this difference in foundation that cannot communicate to thinking based identity - because that thinks it already knows.
Receptivity isn't just about processing information. One may feel a communication without being able to currently make sense of it at head level.
Our opportunity - indeed our responsibility - is to discern the movement in our heart and allow it to move us. If this is truly un covered and extended, then it truly shares. The gift may not be fully accepted or understood but I have the benefit of having shared and you have a witness for your worthiness of my appreciation.
What we say in our mouth is not the governing principle - but what we think in our heart. If we limit ourselves to surface ‘realities’ we do not know what we do because we do not know our own heart. But we are not really escaping the truth.
Comment 2:
The cultural shift from story mind to scientific observing mind is beneath the seeming conflict between the Bible as heart-guide and the Bible as historically valid document.
The truth in a story is reflected in the heart of the teller/writer as well as the reader/listener and is not to be confused with the story itself - but honour the messengers of Peace. No image, concept, symbol or story can be equal to truth. The Bible teaches this. To realize truly we have to 'be still and know, rather than to imposture unrealized truths as if our own.
Science is not concerned with truth because it is inherently blind to the heart - but is involved with what it can map, measure and define and thus predict and control. It’s usage of the term truth is outside the heart sense of truth because the 'observer’ is presumed to be outside the observed. This itself is a story and serves as a mechanism and filter that brings forth a powerful capacity to manipulate the world - but with an ever depreciating wisdom - because it is disconnected from real relationship.
Thinking mind may define 'love, and relationship', but unless surrendered in service to the truth of these it is simply a way of distraction from intimacy - which is the nature of Reality despite that tricksy mind dissociates and hides in stories it wants to be true. What is truth to the mind that wants its own story to be true?
Invisible!
Comment 3 - not posted on HuffPo
In a sense, the form or world-aspect of a spiritual communication is secondary to the point. It reveals something true of your own heart and life as you become capable of discerning or recognizing truth. In defensive mind we will hardly listen, for one will be seeking to validate or protect the mind as it defines itself in your name. But self-seeking mind is destructive of true peace, love or joy and brings in time a willingness to reevaluate from a less demanding perspective, for we are not truly at home in conflict, limitation and pain.
When we open to the truth that renews, heals and reveals our freedom, what then tends to humanly occur is that the form or vehicle that served a true communication is lost to the mind that uses it as an idol - as an external absolute authority or power - and thus usurps the true authority of heartfelt communication, in support of private self-will.
Self-will operates as a largely a hidden or private attempt to control or manipulate one’s own experience founded on a usually unconscious but active desire to judge, which is a process of division and exclusion by which a pseudo sense of self is accorded reality and acted from as if it were true. All of our experience is filtered at this level such that we are deceived by our own mind and know it not - excepting we do know a loss of love, joy and peace no matter what thinking might be used to justify the denial of the heart, Soul or Spirit. And that is why we must question or challenge our experience from the basis of a true foundation and not from the basis of one’s own past based thinking.
The way that such guidance appears or arises in our lives differs - but the Bible, when read in a true willingness to listen rather than persuade or coerce the mind is a rich source of the opening to you of a higher law than human thought can imagine - and that cannot therefore be brought into the realm of human casual association without ‘taking the Name in vain’.
It is not possible to communicate to the surface from the inclusive depth because the nature of the surface is to turn away from the depth so as to engage in self-will. But it is also impossible to ACTUALLY disengage from true will or to CEASE to be what you truly are - no matter what 'experience' is generated to seem to prove otherwise. That which is untrue doesn't so much perish - as cease to be seen as ever having been real. There is a basis for the release of the false and the regaining of a true inheritance, but the mind that wants to study 'ABOUT' the spirit is simply a way to extend the avoidance of relationship.
