I Have Some Questions - New Age

[palm]

I was raised extremely Catholic. It was supremely uncomfortable and I grew up ridiculously confused- I remember the experience was marked by strict elderly individuals who did not give many answers. I was definitely trained to not ask questions, or push further, which kept me in this weird situation where I was just supposed to learn about God as this “guy in the sky”. Having a personal relationship with God was nearly impossible in sterile, cattle-packed classes.

That being said, GOD to me now is an entirely different thing. This is why I’m here today. I’m starting to see a lot of patterns, which is what our brains are meant to do, and I’m coming to conclusions and understandings that I now recognize were the true teachings behind the systematic Catholic lessons I went through. It is hard for me to explain the depth of my new perspective- it’s as if I have sifted through layers upon layers upon layers (passages in holy books of all religions, recorded history, science, math, etc.) and am finally seeing the common thread between them all.

The GOD everyone has always been talking about is literally everything around us- time, space, humanity, animals, plants- you name it! GOD is an encompassing term for both the conscious (us, animals/plants) and unconscious part of the universe (rocks, space, etc.). We got so unbelievably bored being everything that we decided we wanted something to do, and made a game for ourself to play and be entertained by (which is life as we know it)- like a round of hide and seek against played by one person.

How can humans be GOD, though? If you consider GOD as the palm of your hand, you can visibly trace a line from the center to the tip of each of your fingers. Each finger is represented by a different person, showing that we are separate in our identities and in the way we perceive the world around us but the same in our origin.

If you take the Bible and understand it as how human beings have interpreted our existence/origin story rather than literal fact (because you can describe an apple being red in a thousand ways), you can apply it to other ideas humans in different parts of history have come up with. For instance, Freud’s “Id” “Ego” and “SuperEgo” can be applied over “The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit” and can be looked at as two different ways of saying the same thing.

Am I on the right track? I feel like I am. I know it’s very different from how I’ve always had Catholicism and religion in general described to me, but it makes too much sense to disavow these inkling ideas completely. Do you have any thoughts on this?

 

[Minks]

Humans are created BY God, so there’s no possible way for even one person to be another God.

 

[Mishakel]

The GOD everyone has always been talking about is literally everything around us- time, space, humanity, animals, plants- you name it! GOD is an encompassing term for both the conscious (us, animals/plants) and unconscious part of the universe (rocks, space, etc.).

I’m not sure where you’re getting this information from but it’s certainly not from scripture. We as humans have the spirit of God within us, and all of creation is because of God, but that doesn’t make animals and plants God.

 

[Kei]

You are not supposed to just not ask questions–heck, look at the long history of scholasticism! But as classical monotheists, God is much more than what you say you were taught.

You are on the wrong track. You are on a track in much error. God is much more than you and me. He is greater than you imagine. He is not your hand or fingers, or the universe. He is much greater: He is within all these as omnipresent, and upholds all things.
All that is is upheld by Him, greater than you can possibly imagine.

But there’s a prideful trick you must not fall for: you are not God. Reminds me of the oldest trick the Book, literally. We can grow in God, in love, and never exhaust His Grace.

 

[CatholicSpirit]

God lends us his power by authorizing prayer through the patron saints. I prayed about every problem I could think of and tried my best to allow god to hear my problems. Of course I don’t expect immediate results but I know my problems have been brought to the right place. I think through prayer you might change your feelings.

 

[JerryZ]

Well. that does sound very newagee. But GOD is a person an actual person who we can talk to and hear from.
Try listening to the palm of your hand. You can feel its heat or feel the blood pulsating through the veins, but that is not GOD.
GOD created the Universe from NOTHING.
Before that NOTHING existed. Nothing material that is contained within the Universe existed. And we know this through science and reason factually. We have measured the length of time it took from that moment when the Universe was created and yes all of that was written in the Bible. Not the scientific data but the underlain truth is there.
Eventually I hope you will find out how GOD intertwines what goes around us to help us in achieving the best possible outcome to know HIM in person and listen to HIM directly. Not through dreams and itermediaris but face to face.
Peace!

 

[BartholomewB]

For instance, Freud’s “Id” “Ego” and “SuperEgo” can be applied over “The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit” and can be looked at as two different ways of saying the same thing.

No, you’re certainly not on the right track here. Freud saw the psyche as being divisible into three parts, but not everything that comes in threes is the same as Holy Trinity. Freud’s psychology has nothing to do with theology.

 

[RepetantCatholic]

Well, I cannot help your upbringing where you weren’t properly introduced to Catholicism. I was raised in a moderate Catholic household where me and my Dad would take long car rides where he encouraged me to question everything. I don’t know what to do in cases like yours other than telling you not everyone goes through that.

As for your perception, it seems like you are becoming disordered in thoughts. Any time you move too far away from the forged roads there is danger for disordered thinking. I live in California and I’ve met people like that and I would describe them as eccentric. I worry about them, because it can’t be a good sign. Other types I’ve come across can be the opposite too narrow or legalistic or without perspective and these people are typically punitive and prone to chastising or scolding. I worry about them too.

So, I don’t know what to tell you but what you describe is something I and many others wouldn’t participate in. So, clearly if you were correct I wouldn’t be communicating with you. I would be in the heavenly realms ignoring people who play this sort of game with something better to do.

So, is this idea from a YouTube video? There is a lot of weird stuff on the internet. But what you or this person describe is very superficial and dismissive of other people’s suffering.

 

[Minks]

palm:

For instance, Freud’s “Id” “Ego” and “SuperEgo” can be applied over “The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit” and can be looked at as two different ways of saying the same thing.

No, you’re certainly not on the right track here. Freud saw the psyche as being divisible into three parts, but not everything that comes in threes is the same as Holy Trinity. Freud’s psychology has nothing to do with theology.

Amen!

 

[CatholicSpirit]

I’m with BartholomewB on this one, be careful about translating everyday things into scripture it can really screw you up. Here’s one of my fine examples:

I was reading the Bible for a while and realized that one of my biggest enemies was my sister in law. My mom has issues with her younger brothers and his wife growing up so she wrote a letter to him to try and fix things. I tried this idea but took one extra step. There’s a part where the Bible tells you to put a gift at the altar or something like that, basically leave something for someone. I left my sister in law a gift of a yard tool and a letter in a bag apologizing for our feuds.

She called the police and proceeded to act as if it was some kind of threat toward her and maybe even others in her household. I’m now divorced and this added to the chaos of it. Also the part about confession when I came back to the faith after 20 years. Yeah I saw james 5:16 about having to confess sins to be forgiven and for some reason confession slipped my mind. I started revealing sins to those I committed them against and asked for forgiveness and also saying I was trying to gain balance and favor with god over my mistakes in the past. Bad idea. Almost went to jail about 3 more times for stupid stuff that was utterly meaningless people just didn’t like to hear that I was critical of them behind their backs and again took them as threats.

Anyway, I’m telling you these two crazy misinterpretations and what they led me to do, how they led me to be perceived, what they did to me, and I’m sure guess who was laughing all the while (satan). So I’m trying to shed some reality on this aspect of what you mentioned involving the blessed trinity of Freud. Anyway, it’s a happy ending my ex was really not the one for me, I moved to the other side of the United States and retired at age 36. Not too shabby! But yeah, careful about taking those passages out of the pages and applying things to the wrong areas. I did love my wife and would have loved to eventually marry in a church and I’d still be married if I instead of telling my sins to her went and spoke to a priest.

 

[vsedriver]

The GOD everyone has always been talking about is literally everything around us- time, space, humanity, animals, plants- you name it! GOD is an encompassing term for both the conscious (us, animals/plants) and unconscious part of the universe (rocks, space, etc.).

This ‘god’ is not worthy of worship. God is the creator, not the created. Everything you have mentioned here is a creation. God the creator is worthy of worship.

 

[Vico]

…

New Age has pantheism as a basis:

The perennial philosophical question of the one and the many has its modern and contemporary form in the temptation to overcome not only undue division, but even real difference and distinction, and the most common expression of this is holism, an essential ingredient in New Age and one of the principal signs of the times in the last quarter of the twentieth century.
…
The warmth of Mother Earth, whose divinity pervades the whole of creation, is held to bridge the gap between creation and the transcendent Father-God of Judaism and Christianity, and removes the prospect of being judged by such a Being.

In such a vision of a closed universe that contains “God” and other spiritual beings along with ourselves, we recognize here an implicit pantheism. This is a fundamental point which pervades all New Age thought and practice, and conditions in advance any otherwise positive assessment where we might be in favor of one or another aspect of its spirituality. As Christians, we believe on the contrary that “man is essentially a creature and remains so for all eternity, so that an absorption of the human I in the divine I will never be possible”.

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/p...s/rc_pc_interelg_doc_20030203_new-age_en.html

A person can experience deification, a participation in the divine nature, but not change nature: a human is not and cannot be the Holy Trinity.

Catechism of the Catholic Church

285 Since the beginning the Christian faith has been challenged by responses to the question of origins that differ from its own. Ancient religions and cultures produced many myths concerning origins. Some philosophers have said that everything is God, that the world is God, or that the development of the world is the development of God (Pantheism). Others have said that the world is a necessary emanation arising from God and returning to him. Still others have affirmed the existence of two eternal principles, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, locked, in permanent conflict (Dualism, Manichaeism). According to some of these conceptions, the world (at least the physical world) is evil, the product of a fall, and is thus to be rejected or left behind (Gnosticism). Some admit that the world was made by God, but as by a watch-maker who, once he has made a watch, abandons it to itself (Deism). Finally, others reject any transcendent origin for the world, but see it as merely the interplay of matter that has always existed (Materialism). All these attempts bear witness to the permanence and universality of the question of origins. This inquiry is distinctively human.

296 We believe that God needs no pre-existent thing or any help in order to create, nor is creation any sort of necessary emanation from the divine substance.144 God creates freely “out of nothing”:145

If God had drawn the world from pre-existent matter, what would be so extraordinary in that? A human artisan makes from a given material whatever he wants, while God shows his power by starting from nothing to make all he wants.146

 

[CatholicSpirit]

I like how you explained deism as a creator making a watch and then abandoning it. I sort of struggled with that concept like, isn’t everything set in motion by gods design? I don’t understand the difference of what we believe compared to that.

 

[Kei]

God “worketh still” in sustaining the world. We believe in a personal Lord who not only created but sustains all of Creation–how far from those deists who dare to say He merely created, and that is all. They miss out on so much!

 

[CatholicSpirit]

So god is reachable in real time you mean? Deists don’t believe in that?

 

[Kei]

I don’t know what you mean by “reachable in real time,” but if you mean that He is Personal, then yes. Deists do not believe this. They apparently also reject the fact that God sustains the world.

It would seem they’d believe that creation can exist independently of the Creator, as though God were just some sort of watchmaker who left the watch to its own devices.
I hope this clarifies things.

 

[CatholicSpirit]

Yes thanks for that lesson I appreciate it

 

[palm]

We aren’t little clay dolls. We’re beings made so GOD can experience our world through us. Think of us like receivers. So, GOD did make us, but GOD also IS us. GOD is everything- both the observer, the observed, the light allowing us to see, and the room in which things are experienced within.

When I say that GOD is everything, I’m saying it in the sense that literally all of this isn’t just because of GOD, but that it is GOD. The same one spoken about in the bible, and in many other texts (just all under different names- not to be mistaken with the “little g” gods of mythic lore).

Wouldn’t it make sense if an omnipotent creator got bored of just doing everything and wanted something new to do? So GOD made it possible for us to forget who/what GOD actually is to have a whole new game for GOD to play- like self-amnesia with no given timer.

Through prayer and extreme meditation is how I came to these conclusions. I experienced not an angel bestowing knowledge to me, but as if someone had changed the cassette tape of my head from Side A to Side B. On Side B, I learned all of this and took it back to Side A, which is our world as we live in. Side B is the unconcious part of GOD, the underlying workings of the whole universe. It’s like getting plugged into a computer and receiving all the information you needed to know in order to feel safe, whole, and loved.

Apply what the ID, Ego, and SuperEgo do for humans to the parts of the Holy Trinity. The first Google result describing the Holy Trinity is “The Christian doctrine of the Trinity holds that God is one God, but three coeternal consubstantial persons or hypostases—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—as “one God in three Divine persons”. The three persons are distinct, yet are one “substance, essence or nature”.”. If the ID, Ego, and SuperEgo are all a part of the same conciousness, it could also be described as “one thing in three separate parts”. Look at the ID and our worldly desires, and see the manifestation of that in the Son (who became flesh and blood). The SuperEgo is the Holy Spirit which guides us in our morals and values. The father is our ego, our “I”.

 

[Stidlet]

The GOD everyone has always been talking about is literally everything around us- time, space, humanity, animals, plants- you name it! GOD is an encompassing term for both the conscious (us, animals/plants) and unconscious part of the universe (rocks, space, etc.).

This is heresy, this is extreme pantheism. God creates and sustains our existence, but he is not synonymous with us.

For instance, Freud’s “Id” “Ego” and “SuperEgo” can be applied over “The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit” and can be looked at as two different ways of saying the same thing.

They aren’t similar. The Father is that which all being and life flow, the Son is the Logos/the Word, and the Holy Spirit is the counselor. This isn’t comparable to desires vs morals, and the mediating force in Freud’s philosophy.

 

[Calliope]

What you describe is Pantheism, it’s not in any way consistent with Catholic theology.

I myself am a Pantheist.