Proof is in the Pudding

After watching a movie about Gore Vidal's life I dropped into a youtube discussion on  God and stuff and then enjoyed making a few comments.

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# 1 Main comment:

Our self-definition is our usually unconscious core beliefs as to what and who and where we are in relation to any and everything - for so do we perceive and experience ourself to be.
The 'add-on' beliefs are part of the identification within the persona that is a construct of such beliefs, feeling, thoughts and their acting out.
If one truly believes something then it is not coercively initiated but freely accepted and lived.
Reducing everything to forms or concepts - as if then to discuss toward an outcome of any clarity is backwards. For the Living Context is the relationship arising from a shared purpose or desire. Without such relationship, communication is rendered into weaponry of competing assertive identity.
Thus a world in which war of destruction, misery and loss of all kinds is perpetrated in the name of God or Love or Freedom - or any other 'Divine' or innate quality to a balanced and unconflicted movement of being. Only such qualities can be Wholly embraced - yet the idol or image or concept of them is accepted instead OR ELSE!
Gore Vidal is correct in discerning that a god of coercion is unworthy of our capacity to know true and free will.
However, Babel is much more than a fragmentation of tongues - it is where even the parts of the mind cannot communicate or serve common purpose - for the simple act of using its capacity against its true, innate or 'Divine' function.
Not that we are 'punished' for such act - but that such act is self-limiting, self-sacrificing and self-punishing WHILE the act is persisted in. Of course the mind in a posture of independence and opposition is already a story and from such seeds come endless dram to account for and justify the original premise - of being somehow outside and apart from the Whole, as the power of a different Cause and wielding different effects that testify a hidden powerlessness seeking power and validation for ITSELF apart and alone. This is the tragicomedy of our Personae as well as the Great Game that can be played in almost infinite variations excepting that core elements of drama are integrally woven with evil of threat or loss that then gives a different meaning to the pre-condition, and thus a movement to overcome or escape the threat or adversity. To be exclusively identified in character may seem very fulfilling as the peak experience to the fragment that identifies in winning - but the provision of such is an increasingly denied and abandoned supporting cast of 'otherness'. Hence the awakening drama of the Prodigal Son - of the recognition of wretched self-illusion and its wasteland of spiritual poverty - from which the impulse, memory or prompting grace of one's integral or 'Divine' Inheritance, inspires a purpose that meets a truly shared response of Life - rather than crony and phoney alliances of the tacit attempt to use others lovelessly.
Whatever anyone thinks they believe - what they do and be manifestly present as - tells the true of it. The identity in persona or mask is not our true Cause or Being - but while we are in the physical experience it either serves purpose or fragments in an imagination of self-specialness - by which a filtered and distorted 'version' of the Whole reflects a partiality associated with sin and thus denied or hidden.
In a sense it does not matter what your personal way of re-integrating is so much as the experiential and relational event of giving and receiving a true Humanity. I articulate here because I have joy in the invitation to Feel from a deeper Perspective - not to assert 'my' truth or 'the' truth. But we can all recognize what is truly resonating with our current sense of who we truly feel and know ourself to be - and often we do so after recognizing what we are NOT. IE Not accepting of a coercive, victimizing, or mechanically loveless existence. That such a pattern is so pervasive in our world suggests that we are as individuals, accepting and believing and serving such a purpose - or we would see and share a different world - and of course there are examples where we do - but many deceits that play on the conformity of appearances of love and respectability - particularly in defence against a sense of being reviled, rejected or ridiculed - or indeed even more extreme forms of hateful outcome.
To religionists Gore Vidal may seem the ungodly - and therefore less 'moral', but appearances can and often are deceptive. True moral integrity is quite unselfconscious and calls no attention to itself - indeed it claims no self specialness - not asserts false modesty - being thoughtlessly embracing of the true Qualities of the moment at hand.

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Ollie Phelan commented generally:

But Religions should be criticised , especially if they claim to know the truth . When a scientist does an experiment , he repeats it about 100 times to see if hes made an error . Then when hes satisfied he sends the results to another HUNDRED labs to replicate the same experiment and look for faults . In the end , the experiment has been tested , scrutinised , criticised , and dissected for mistakes a thousand times . THEN ......its published for every other scientist and peer to read and criticise . Religion says " NO , no testing our ideas "

To Ollie Phelan and all:

There are all sorts of signs that many such sci-truths are not as reproducible as presumed - along with corruptions of the peer review system and indeed institutional corruptions of The Establishment (sic).
But I get the gist of your point and it has a good point - because if one is a lover of truth then one need never fear critical debate. However, you are aware, (I presume), that language can and generally is used to assert 'narratives' or interpreted 'truths' so as to undermine, invalidate or discredit the rivals - by fair means or foul.
Insofar as The Individual relationship within a spiritually unfolding Life was subverted and corrupted to social control of State Religion - then that is a wielding of power over Individuals in the disguise of serving a Group Identity to which the Individual is sacrificed and conformed.
But the innate Religious or Spiritual Sense is an Intimacy of Life that no man can IN FACT usurp or break asunder - but only deceit of guilt and fear can rob one's true Inheritance OF.
Whereas up to a point one can test the grosser aspects of the 'material world' with scientific method - when it comes to uncovering and illuminating truth within our own Consciousness OF event, relation or inner qualities of experience, the only guide is the love of truth. We do test out our ideas and beliefs - for that gives us the life we fruit as their result. But I only need look to the qualities that you extend to discern 'where' you are coming from. If you demonstrate an honouring willingness to communicate - I don't need to know the particulars of the belief system that serves your freedom and desire to do so.
So Vidal tested the idea of a coercive victimizing 'god' and an inner honesty found it did not match his sense of anything worshipful. Basically the idea that the evil within us must be burned out or nuked is the dominant idea in the world today. And science is largely on board with supplying the technology to 'serve humanity' - but scrape away the sugar coating and the same old god is sacrificing the Way, the Truth and the Life as it has since the original imprint that we are still conformed and conditioned to reenact. It subverts the teaching of Jesus into such a sacrifice - but that is still stuffing New Wine into old paradigm!

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Pedro de Almeida said in general commenting:

God and religion are two different things for sure. Religion is humans tricking humans and God is Humans fooling themselves. Religions can be disproven and God does not exist (until proof otherwise =P)

To Pedro de Almeida - and generally commenting:

And the idea ''Humans' is God fooling Him/Her Self.
Existence cannot be proven excepting anything and Everything (physical or non physical) - without exception - embodies such quality of being regardless any other meaning ascribed to it.
Hence one of the 'Names' of the Source or Cause and Totality of All That Is is... I Am That I Am.
So while it may be true to say God does not exist at the level of things or objects separate from the Subject - its simply true that one cannot say anything about G-d at all - or one inherently makes an image or form of G-d and participates in the insanity of self-concept at war with its own true Nature. Such a painful, threatening and corrupted or evil sense of self as then reflects is the basis for the Heavy Denial of Consciousness and the Deep Compression into a seemingly separate and temporarily ignorant escape from deep inner conflict.
What is it that drives people? It CAN be a joyous spontaneity of clear purpose - but in almost total now it is the engine of fear and guilt, blame and shame, anger and aversion to pain. THAT is the 'religion' I see the world sucking on and conforming to - regardless the surface differentiations of 'identity politicking'.
But I don't have to use the word or symbol G-d to point to what I mean by it. I can test and challenge the false religion (template) and drive out the moneylenders (that which has no true belonging in the Temple), to make a receptivity through which Life - beyond name and form - can prove itself - or rather Fruit Itself as my own shared contribution.
Anything can mean anything if one is not honestly grounded in one's own Life - hence it does in a crazy world that thinks its thinking is genuine currency. Hollow forms and empty ritual are the mark of attempt to cover or escape a loss of love. The more people act as if loveless is natural, the more they sacrifice their core Innocence of being to prop up an illusion of power.
One cant get a meaningful answer from a meaningless question. Knowing what to ask is probably the hard bit - because deceits frame everything in such a way as to deny any real choice or ability to question.