Steve Petermann wrote: ↑Fri Dec 17, 2021 10:28 pm
AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Dec 17, 2021 6:52 pm
My question is, if someone comes to you and expresses how alienated, isolated, fragmented, etc. they feel from being 'cut-off' from and out of tune with the "transcendent divine depth", what is your concrete advice for them to reestablish this spiritual connection? Would you just say, "the Divine is infinite with possibilities for diversity and creativity", and expect that to be a satisfying remedy to this profound spiritual alienation of the person who is genuinely seeking Divine rest? When we keep these things so vague, imprecise, and abstract, they become practically worthless.
As I said, there is no "one size fits all". If someone asked me for advice I wouldn't have a strict definitive answer
for them. Paul Tillich said, "Anything can be transparent to the divine". Where I had some similarities with them, I could share ways I try to tap into that transcendent divine depth but they probably already know the avenues where they have experienced that depth. In a dialog, there might be some specifics but in general, the advice might be just "seek and ye shall find", or "be open to it" or "face life's challenges head-on" or "dialog with others about your journey". Depending on who they are it might be through art, music, literature, athletics, philosophy, theology, religion, science, dance, relationships, nature, meditation, prayer, communal activities, solitude, and on and on. The opportunities are endless.
That's the impression I got from your post and it is the common approach of the modern age. In my law practice, that is also 'common wisdom' - no generalized legal advice can be given to people because they all have their unique personal situation. That is why it is assumed machines cannot simply replace people in these sorts of fields. Of course, there is truth in that. But it is the most surface-level layer of truth. That is because, during the normal course of our daily thinking and counseling, we are not also consciously observing and thinking through the higher-order patterns of meaning which are constellated between the particular manifestations. For the most part, that is thought to be irrelevant to the practice of law (or priesthood), because we move from one case to another and we feel like we are starting afresh with each new individual. BUT,
subconsciously, assuming our practice improves over time, we are actually absorbing these deeper transpersonal layers of meaning and they are informing how we confront each new particular manifestation. We are
integrating our knowledge. Our thinking is moving vertically instead of only horizontally. But we reach a max capacity as long as this vertical movement is not
deepened by making it conscious - by
consciously observing our own thinking. This is what TCT is pointing to.
That is why I mentioned the thing about personality types. We need to be really honest with ourselves here. It is
default thinking to feel, "each person has their own personality type and history". We do
not normally feel, "
each personality type has its own group of people". But that is what the guy who basically discovered the idea of "personality types" (Jung) concluded. You see, these concepts we bandy about can become practically anything we
want them to be if we are not also carefully reasoning through their deeper meanings. You want the concept of "personality type" to be a justification for "there is no objectively valid approach for most people", so that is exactly what it becomes. Again, this is not personal to you but common to nearly all people in our time, including myself if I am not paying attention to my own thinking process when it confronts the percepts and concepts of the world. We need to confront these tendencies within ourselves honestly and by way of Thinking. Our thinking flows within many 'guides' and 'constraints', as Cleric has illustrated several times on this thread alone. I am observing that the people who aren't following his logic are the same people who approach them with a
preconceived outlook on spirituality. That is especially true if the outlook has been formed after much time and effort, which clearly you have put into writing your blog articles.
We are not telling you or anyone else to abandon everything you know or have written, or to start over from scratch in terms of all that you have learned. That is the beautfy of a truly consistent idealism monism -
all reasoned worldviews find their place and utility in our spiritual evolutionary growth. But that is only IF we come to perceive them as vastly incomplete moments of an organic Unity. These conceptual systems are all
symbols pointing to something much higher than themselves. And we need to remember the
purpose of a symbol is
not to point back at itself via an 'impenetrable veil'. When
we erect that veil, we automatically convert all the rich symbols into mere pictures; we have condemned them to be mere isolated idols. These idols prevent us from reaching any shared understanding with others in the world. It keeps "art, music, literature, athletics, philosophy, theology, religion, science, dance, relationships, nature, meditation, prayer, communal activities, solitude, and on and on" fragmented from each other, even though we can penetrate to their deeper and
shared layer of meaning
without mystically obscuring their content. All of our fears of "rest" (static homogenization) in this regard are our own limitations which arise from the artificial hard veil we first subconsciously constructed and refuse to tear down.