Soul Evolution- Part VIII. Experience Vs. Dogma

“Soul Evolution” A Sermon to Liberate the Soul of the Self, America, and the World


VIII. Experience vs. Dogma

“Do I believe in God? What is God?”

What’s there to believe? Either you live life to its fullest or you don’t. And, for most of us, life is impeded by an existential crises of "what are the answers to those big questions- how did we get here, what is our purpose and destiny?" A lot of people, afraid to think for themselves because they don't wish to overwhelmed by such an enourmous task, use easy answers from either Dogmatic believers or hard-scientific-fact athiests. It's a crutch. How can you live life to its fullest; dancing with a crutch like this? It is not symmetrical; it is not beautiful...

I ask again if you are a free thinker or a dependent or an unncessary skeptic...

If you get dependent on a crutch or hung up on just one thing, how is that living life to its fullest? Is that freedom? I’m not just talking about drug addicts, alcoholics, or prostitutes here. Not even only external objects like money, positions of power, or uneven relationships or obsessions. I’m also talking about thoughts. Imbalanced thoughts. You see, just because something is interesting, meaningful, dependable or resourceful now does not mean it is functional in the long run. In fact, it becomes dysfunction when it overstays its welcome; your mind has expanded and is ready to move on to the next level, but you do not want to progress because you are comfortable. You sell yourself short this way, because your thoughts that once helped you now impede you and take control over your attitude and behavior like an authoritarian leader who claims himself to be “dictator for life”.

"The inherent baselessness in physical and mental objects is what we call reality" (ancient Hindu quote)
It's a question that opens the mind to what is real...epistemology...but after a while, it becomes dysfunctional, and impedes the mind! Questions like "what is real?" are to be asked, chuckled at, reflected upon, tucked away and then reassessed periodically throughout one's life, not to be obsessed over...or God forbid, answered...unless you are willing to go insane.

Worrying too much is imbalance. Don't think about the past, it's over, it's not real anymore. Don't think about the future, it hasn't happened yet, it's not real either. Life is always Here and Now- be in the moment, and you will find happiness.

And when something is keeping you down and holding you back; when you have conflicting morals about what to believe- go with the choice that makes you think harder. It will lead to growth when you think for yourself and let go of preconcieved notions or old ways of thinking about things. Expand your consciousness- but remember God's morality!

There's a lot of good stuff in religious texts, but you can see easily where some lies got mixed in there when it impedes on 1) Free Will/Choice in Life 2) Liberty to Pursue Happiness and 3) Fellowship. Anything that can be read as anti-non believer, such as anti-Semite or anti-Orthodox or anti-infidel, anti-female, anti-homosexial; in general, anti-Unity, is a lie. As someone who is aware of both heterosexual and homosexual urges, I find people who don't want to grant gay couples the same finacial benefits as straight couples alarming. Anyone who thinks God is saying, in the Bible, that homosexuality is unnatural, evil, or wrong, I should like to have a word with you. Was Moses not under the Holy Spirit when he received the Ten Commandments? People argue that the Apostles were under the Holy Spirit when their accounts were given. But my argument is this: anyone can be under the Holy Spirit at certain times in their life, but just because we speak the Truth sometimes, doesn't mean we always do so. So the Apostles, although they were right about many things, were not under the Holy Spirit for the ENTIRE duration of their accounting for God’s word. As an example: recall the Apostles all witnessed Jesus’ death, but they all had different accounts of what happened. One of them said Jesus died peacefully, while another said Jesus cried out “God, why have you forsaken me?” You see, the Apostles were just humans, like you and me, and humans are fickle. Like you and me, they spoke a lot of Truth, but also falsehoods as well, and most of it is generally unintentional.

Sometimes we just make up stuff that makes sense to us, or we miss something and fill in the blanks, or we get confused. We can’t be perfect. Jesus, they say, was perfect. But were the Apostles perfect? No! It has been said that the disciples did not even know what Jesus was talking about half the time. “Do you understand what I am saying,” Jesus would ask. “No, but teach me,” they would respond. St. Paul, when writing about gays, he was putting his own opinion in the Bible. It made perfect sense to him, and hey, he was on a roll with all the other stuff he got right. But his understanding of the universe, though it made complete sense to him, was not perfect, and it is not the only perspective. What did he know about being gay? Nothing…he was straight and looking at gays and thinking to himself what made sense; projecting his perspective onto other people and calling it morality. We do this all the time, but we’re not always right, are we? And not only this, but the Bible was passed down orally before it was codified at the Council of Nicaea hundreds of years later where men decided what accounts of Jesus’ life were to be put in the Bible and which were not. The only laws in the Bible that supposedly came from God directly were the Mosaic Laws, which did not include sodomy or scissoring (I've looked over all the different versions of the 10 Commandments and found zilch).

The other "laws" where written by men, sometimes under the Holy Spirit, sometimes not. People who don’t like homosexuality either have no understanding of what it’s like to be gay, so therefore have a limited knowledge and no moral or policy authority when it comes to queer truth and rights; or they have gay feelings themselves and project them onto other people and hate those people for manifesting their inner uncontrollable desires. The Apostles were not God incarnate, so everything they said was is not infallible (the same goes for the Pope). I recommend going through the Bible and finding quotes about Freedom, Liberty and Equality- God's only laws, because they allow us to live Life to its fullest. This is what politics should be all about- what's fair. And discrimnation against something you don't know well enough to understand- such as sexual orientation- is not fair. Only gay people are an authority on being gay.

It's called "praxis"- "the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted or practiced" (wikipedia)

In Ancient Greek the word praxis (πρᾱξις) referred to activity engaged in by free men. Aristotle held that there were three basic activities of man: theoria, poiesis and praxis. There corresponded to these kinds of activity three types of knowledge: theoretical, to which the end goal was truth; poietical, to which the end goal was production; and practical, to which the end goal was action. Aristotle further divided practical knowledge into ethics, economics and politics. He also distinguished between eupraxia (good praxis) and dyspraxia (bad praxis, misfortune).

This leads into mysticism- where one can experience pnuematic Logos (which I translate as the breath of Truth- the Word of God), directly from God
in this context it means direct experience of the divine rather than relying on the words of others or speculation.

Lifted from Wikipedia:

Praxis is also key in meditation and spirituality, where emphasis is placed on gaining first-hand experience of concepts and certain areas, such as union with the Divine, which can only be explored through praxis due to the inability of the finite mind (and its tool, language) to comprehend or express the infinite. In an interview for YES! Magazine, Matthew Fox explained it this way:Wisdom is always taste -- in both Latin and Hebrew, the word for wisdom comes from the word for taste -- so it's something to taste, not something to theorize about. "Taste and see that God is good," the psalm says; and that's wisdom: tasting life. No one can do it for us. The mystical tradition is very much a Sophia tradition. It is about tasting and trusting experience, before institution or dogma.[3] In fact, the Hebrew word for reason ("ta'am"), not wisdom ("chochmah"), is the same as the Hebrew word for taste ("ta'am").

You can praxis pnuematic gnosis (knowledge) of Logos anyday and the Holy Spirit will provide a secure line in which God, the source, can answer your call, the question of His Child. As long as freedom, liberty, and equality are the themes, you will know that it is God providing the pneuma (the "breath," the Logos, the divine word). It is true, the Holy Spirit’s channels are subjective to everyone; it is impossible to explain the ineffable experience of mystic divine gnosis to anyone because God is talking to you in a way that only makes sense to you. But it is always the same God; anything that goes against positive principles is the voice of the ego (in the sense of "doership"- the self that is attached to the City of Man as opposed to the City of God), who would have you not grow if it had its way; and often the ego is afraid of the awe-inspiring power of God, so it associates things like God and fear, when they are complete opposites. Fear is instinct, programmed into our DNA to save our tails from predators. But all fear slips away when one finally gets know God. It will be the voice of the Eternal Self, the part of the Source that is within; it will rise above the voice of temporal self and the voice of Thantos, who goes against life. Thantos, who feeds on the blood of war...