The Meek Shall Inherit the Land

[AlanFromWichita]

If you hadn’t bought it to our attention, no one else would have noticed

LOL. I’m still getting used to this new reality. Turns out if you send pride out to clean up its tracks, it ends up stomping a bunch of new tracks all over.

Makes me think of that Carrie Underwood song “Jesus take the wheel”. Can’t help but think it should continue “… and keep it!”

For sure. What are Holy Spirits for, anyway, if not to take the wheel and keep it?

Since you mentioned that song I’ll go look it up, too. Thank you.

Alan

 

[mercytruth]

LOL. I’m still getting used to this new reality. Turns out if you send pride out to clean up its tracks, it ends up stomping a bunch of new tracks all over.

For sure. What are Holy Spirits for, anyway, if not to take the wheel and keep it?

Since you mentioned that song I’ll go look it up, too. Thank you.

Alan

Alan, I need to ask you a few questions, if you do not mind.

What is the difference between letting go of one’s ego in Buddhism, and submitting one’s will to the will of our Heavenly Father through Jesus Christ our Lord?

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Alan, I need to ask you a few questions, if you do not mind.

What is the difference between letting go of one’s ego in Buddhism, and submitting one’s will to the will of our Heavenly Father through Jesus Christ our Lord?

I think they are analogous. What the specific differences are, I don’t know, but mystically I see the same sort of situation. One must deny himself (another way Jesus put it) and letting go of one’s ego is basically what takes place. People will argue until the sun goes cold about whether it’s dangerous to equate a Buddhist practice to a Catholic one, and although those arguments are precious, they have the same basic mechanism so to me it’s about whose brand of car you want to take on the spiritual journey. Maybe one’s a brand new Caddy and the other is a junker of an import, but they are going the same general direction and using similar preparation methods.

Aha! I just saw one possible material difference. In Buddhism I think one simply lets go, whereas in the other you said “submitting will.” This gives the emphasis that there is, in fact, a Holy Spirit who can and will guide. I don’t know how that comes across in Buddhism.

Actually “being meek” transcends religious boundaries. I have a Hindu son-in-law who is a pleasure to talk to on religious topics – including Christianity – because he is so open and non-presumptuous. And he treats my daughter (who is carrying my first grandchild) like a queen at all times. When they got married, our pastor said that in 27 years he had never seen a couple score at or very near 100 on all scales of all marriage understanding and compatibility tests he gave them. They visit us more than the other kids and they are always enthusiastic and pleasant, and helpful any time they can be. More Catholics should be like him.

Emily and Prashant at their Catholic wedding:
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.ne...4649387835_157400870_30629671_301522348_n.jpg

The day before, they had a Hindu wedding:
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.ne...875001308937_1058326430_31671963_839807_n.jpg

This way anyone concerned about my non-issues with other religions can tell themselves my kids made me that way.

Alan

 

[mercytruth]

Alan, I really do appreciate your honesty with me, and the pictures and comments.

Here is my other question, in your previous post you mention that there are ‘Holy Spirits’, in this post you mention ‘a Holy Spirit’. My question for you, is there one Holy Spirit, or many Holy Spirits?

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Alan, I really do appreciate your honesty with me, and the pictures and comments.

Here is my other question, in your previous post you mention that there are ‘Holy Spirits’, in this post you mention ‘a Holy Spirit’. My question for you, is there one Holy Spirit, or many Holy Spirits?

As I understand it, there is one “Holy Spirit.” I tend to get mixed up because when I talk about spirit I never know whether it’s the Holy Spirit, my spirit, or someone else’s. I’m not entirely sure but it seems like all of these spirits are hooked together to the point that calling it singular or plural could be a grammatical exercise. To some it’s probably blasphemy, but I don’t call it that; I call it a different way of modeling the situation.

So far one of the communication models I’m working on has one “spirit” infrastructure that connects to all and not just to all living. Human hearts communicate through the spirit and through the workings of the mind. That’s one reason people take each other wrong – not the spirit or the heart or the messages, but that once it feeds through the speech codecs (coder-decoders) and through a distorted and noisy communication channel, it often gets mistaken by meaning something different to the receiver compared to the sender. (I used to work as electrical engineer in Bell Labs so I like using communication models.)

To keep things consistent, I’ve even had to determine that these “miscommunications” themselves are also being taken care of under the auspices of the Holy Spirit. So I see that the trajectory of miscommunications and how they are handled could actually be part of God’s plan because there are things merging that never merged before. I really am starting to see a move toward worldwide spiritual union, and it’s coming up from places I’ve never expected before, including some people who don’t necessarily consider themselves “religious.”

I’ve also had models that basically anything that exists or happens can be chalked up to “dithering” – a little “trick” that control systems engineers use to handle complicated systems as if they were simple, linear systems. The dictionary definition doesn’t do the word justice.

Alan

P.S. It occurs to me that there is no scientific reason there couldn’t be more than one “spirit world” because all you have to do is add dimensions humans can’t perceive and you automatically have a communications network they can’t directly access. I don’t see this as being contrary to scripture, but possibly supplementary to the written Word accessible through the Living Word only – we hope to learn these things some day.

 

[mercytruth]

Frankly Alan, my own circuits are going a bit haywire.

I know you are not talking about pantheism, nor the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin… quantum mechanics maybe.

I am someone of simple faith, who believes in the great and **ultimate **purpose and desire of our Creator which is elucidated by the apostle Paul in seven words: ‘that God might be all in all’. How we get there is through the abolition of death, and then our Lord Jesus Christ submits all to God our Father.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Frankly Alan, my own circuits are going a bit haywire.

I know you are not talking about pantheiism, nor the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin… quantum mechanics maybe.

I am someone of simple faith, who believes in the great and **ultimate **purpose and desire of our Creator which is elucidated by the apostle Paul in seven words: ‘that God might be all in all’. How we get there is through the abolition of death, and then our Lord Jesus Christ submits all to God our Father.

Actually yes, I’m talking in part about quantum mechanics. From the double slit experiment alone we find out God’s world is not bound by the direction of time, things can happen simultaneously and at different times both, and that supposedly “unintelligent” electrons behave differently when observed then when they are not. And that’s just one experiment that shows the glory of the Lord. I’m not enough of a religious scholar to know what I come across as. These theories, I’ve been working on for years and really just this month they have exploded in many ways to improve my own stinking thinking to the point I’m feeling and experiencing many of these things that were only academic before.

String theory, what little I know of it, could actually be as an olive branch extended from science to religion – from ideas of causality to complexity. I can see how once the mathematicians get everything out there into dimensions incomprehensible, God can show us how all these gajillions of loose-ends are actually tied.

I like your drive for an ultimate truth. One thing I have trouble with is people get caught up in all the details. They spend their lives in analysis on things that seem unimportant. For myself, I am fascinated both by overview and microscopic and macroscopic views of things, at all levels of abstraction. That keeps the channel open to guide me toward plunging into further mysteries.

Alan

 

[mercytruth]

Alan,

On one hand, we have the second law of thermodynamics, on the other hand, we have the scripture regarding the Son of God, "who upholds all things, by the word of his power." (Heb. 1:3)

On the one hand, the heavens will be rolled up like a scroll. On the other hand, there will be a ‘new heavens and a new earth’.

Are we approaching the unity of spirit during the dissolution of matter? For myself, there is no unity of spirit without one being joined together in the Spirit of the faith in the sacrificial death and righteous resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ

 

[TimothyH]

This makes my day. I have intended to incorporate thoughts that mystics had with my own.

Alan

Have you read, “Abandonment to Divine Providence” or sometimes titled “The Sacrament of the Present Moment” by Jean-Pierre De Caussade?

I think you would like it.

Also, “In the School of the Holy Spirit” by Jaque Phillipe.

-Tim-

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Alan,

On one hand, we have the second law of thermodynamics, on the other hand, we have the scripture regarding the Son of God, "who upholds all things, by the word of his power." (Heb. 1:3)

To me, there is no real evidence that reality itself is conserved; therefore it seems kind of quaint to make suppositions. When we think things are conserved, it’s because that’s as close as we can measure it. Once somebody like Einstein shows that conservation of mass and energy really can’t be because they can be swapped for each other, then science gets creative about reexamining old data and designing new experiments for evidence of the new perturbation.

For example, why can’t any universe with black holes in it, use them to vacuum out old reality and consciousness, and explode them as in fireworks or big bangs – into new realities beyond where reality had gone before? Maybe a black hole is kind of like a backwards Roman Candle. Except in a true Black Hole, all concepts of human invention and imagination become unified under the pressure and so we don’t even know from our point of view whether our particular “holes” are spewing us a new world, or sucking out the old one. We humans get all hung up on this thing about time always going forward. Time and space cannot exist without each other.

But then comes, what is it actual substance. In the beginning, there was the Word, and all that was made was of Word. So in the Christian world that Jesus showed us, everything that is and even is not, is a part of the Word.

On the one hand, the heavens will be rolled up like a scroll. On the other hand, there will be a ‘new heavens and a new earth’.

These sound like two allegories for the same truth. There will be a modification to our senses, implemented somehow. Everything else is detail.

Are we approaching the unity of spirit during the dissolution of matter? For myself, there is no unity of spirit without one being joined together in the Spirit of the faith in the sacrificial death and righteous resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ

Please help me understand this. What does it mean to you that everything is joined “in the sacrificial death and righteous …” I think that marked the official point where death and life were transcended, restoring hope of eternal life to mortal beings. What were you thinking?

Have you read, “Abandonment to Divine Providence” or sometimes titled “The Sacrament of the Present Moment” by Jean-Pierre De Caussade?

I think you would like it.

Also, “In the School of the Holy Spirit” by Jaque Phillipe.

-Tim-

I haven’t but I think I’ll at least look into them. Thank you.

Alan

 

[mercytruth]

Alan, leaving theories of physics behind, because they are beyond my capabilities to comprehend them. I will attempt to answer your inquiry of what I meant regarding the unity of the Spirit of God in bringing about the new heavens and the new earth where God will be all in all.

Every human being has a free will to choose good or evil, life or death. When an individual is given the opportunity to choose the salvation that is offered through our Lord’s sacrificial death for our sins and his glorious resurrection from the dead for our justification, that individual is joined to the Spirit of the living God. That individual is alive is their spirit, and no longer dead in their tresspasses and sins. That individual will partake of the resurrection of the body incorruptible in the new heavens and earth where there will be no more death of any type.

There is no unity with the one Spirit of the living God apart from this salvation that we have through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Granted, there may be exceptions. There may be individuals who live a moral life according to the dictates of their God given conscience, individuals who are meek, maybe individuals like your son-in-law…individuals who have never heard of this salvation, who most probably will be accepted into God’s kingdom of eternal life in the judgment to come. God only knows, He is judge of every heart.

Somehow, if I understand you Alan, I have difficulty in understanding or accepting that the spirit of every human being is in the process of being united to the one Spirit of the Almighty God. Maybe if one accepts the premise of universal salvation for all, then maybe I would understand you. There are two many teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ which seem to indicate otherwise.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Every human being has a free will to choose good or evil, life or death. When an individual is given the opportunity to choose the salvation that is offered through our Lord’s sacrificial death for our sins and his glorious resurrection from the dead for our justification, that individual is joined to the Spirit of the living God. That individual is alive is their spirit, and no longer dead in their tresspasses and sins. That individual will partake of the resurrection of the body incorruptible in the new heavens and earth where there will be no more death of any type.

So would you say that when the person is faced with the decision is when the “joining” takes place, or is sequencing an issue?

Like would you say they are joined so they may participate in the decision whether to remain joined? And if you remain joined, does that not indicate your “inner law” will kick in and keep you from the death of your sins, and guide you from then on as long as you walk the earth? These questions don’t necessarily follow from what you’ve said; I’m mixing and matching with some of my own ideas here.

There is no unity with the one Spirit of the living God apart from this salvation that we have through our Lord Jesus Christ.

So, back to something you asked me, is there one Spirit or are there many spirits and possible also One Holy Spirit? I think you would say the latter but I wanted to see if I was evenly remotely tuned in.

I don’t know about you, but this is about the first time I’ve really tried to discuss it with anybody so the quality of my arguments may vary.

Granted, there may be exceptions.
…
God only knows, He is judge of every heart.

For this reason, I don’t even like to play the “what-if” games about whether a person will go to hell for this or that. I don’t believe that it is even possible to estimate who is a saint or not, except the official ones as specfied by the Church. People can say, “a child molester is worse than an income tax cheat,” well maybe but I don’t know in any given cases what God sees in someone’s heart which I have no human facility to access and their outwardly observable behavior alone is not sufficient.

Somehow, if I understand you Alan, I have difficulty in understanding or accepting that the spirit of every human being is in the process of being united to the one Spirit of the Almighty God. Maybe if one accepts the premise of universal salvation for all, then maybe I would understand you. There are two many teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ which seem to indicate otherwise.

I don’t know if I am in line with the label of “universal salvation for all” because I’ve come to most of these conclusions from more technical or experiential approaches and not so much theology. I like to focus on models that work for me to adjust and enjoy my own life better and help others do the same. Honestly I’m not concerned about the afterlife or anything like that, except how it might fit into my models. So the more theology and Catholic (and non-catholic) teachings I learn, the more I can tweak the models. Right now I don’t have a model of what constitutes “salvation,” because I’m pretty focused these days on transformational aspects by which being born into the spirit actually renews us and changes our minds, behavior, (and in my case finally beat a “permanent” mental illness into complete submission) – so I’ve focused mostly on the cases where this happens while the person is still alive. So maybe that helps understand. I don’t disagree with other models; usually I try to build them into mine so I can see how the opinions of everybody I know fit together like a nice quilt.

Alan

 

[mercytruth]

Alan,

If there is one characteristic about you that I would attribute to you, is that you are a very intelligent man without guile, and they are difficult to find. So, I believe God loves you very much.

Secondly, mental illness is a cross that you have been carrying. A cross that is oftentimes misunderstood, so what can I say except, the peace of God be with you.

 

[57Bill]

TimothyH
thanks for the post I enjoyed all of it!

An Aramaic translation is “gentle” as in non-aggressive, or surrendering to God. Teachable is a good one! We need soft hearts for the Holy Spirit to teach and guide us.

edit to correct posters formal name