Re: Essay: Man, Know Thyself
Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2021 11:28 am
Elaine Pagels offers some interesting views on Apocalypse/Revelation.
Here's a symbol for meditation:AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 5:00 am What I was attempting to convey on another thread is that the above conclusion stems from a particular mode of perceiving and conceiving of Nature and Culture, i.e. cyclical and circular. Once that mode is adopted, yes, it makes sense that the dual-aspects of the world that we are all too familiar with will not simply "end". Another mode of perception-conception, which is characteristic of Western 'Faustian' civilization, concludes that the dual-aspects we are familiar with will transform through their tensions into some 'higher' Unity. We can see this conception clearly in the scripture which underlies Western civilization:
Such views emerge when spirituality doesn't go very deep.
In other words, the devil is most powerful when people think that he doesn't exist or when they expect him somewhere else, or that they have already befriended him, or transcended him. It is exactly in these cases that people become blind for the hidden motives in their own soul life. And they become blind for the simple reason that they don't think there's anything hidden, they don't think there's soul depth to be investigated - it seems to them everything is already clear in front of them. Then people become tools in the hands of various forces that have their own goals quite sideways of the upward spiral, while they think they are already One with the Universe and everything they do is 'good'.Mephistopheles: (To Faust.)
These folk wouldn’t feel the devil, even
If he’d got them dangling by the neck.
You 'nailed' * it (IMO), Cleric! Xeptin' I would say "in time" instead of "within the physical", albeit I think we are talkin' about the same thang.Cleric K wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 12:04 pm On the other hand, after the "I" was fully incarnated in the temporal, for the first time in the Christ event, consciousness gradually finds itself as embedded within time. Cycles turn out to be more like spirals. They don't repeat indefinitely but every cycle brings something new - it does not end where it started. Now time and timelessness should be gradually integrated through evolution, not by escaping after death but by finding the timeless Spirit within the physical.
So what's yours about hers, dodgy man?
It is helpful to apply all of these Revelations to the individual psyche, not only because that is a true meaning of the symbolism employed, but it then also allows a smoother transition of conceptions up through the fractally-nested human structures of family, community, nation and world. I simply don't see commentators like Pagels doing anything like that, but she is far from being a minority in that regard. Everything in scripture, including Gnostic and apocryphal writings, is flattened out into rigid theistic dogma or vacuous "liberation theology", or perhaps some toxic mixture of the two.
Yeah, I understand your concern.David_Sundaram wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 4:13 pm Xeptin' I would say "in time" instead of "within the physical"
My point is that use, abuse and the need for discernment exist at all levels, in all directions in a great mysteriousness in which everything is connected.