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Truthseeker30
Joined: 14 Jan 2005
Posts: 58
Location: New York
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 Posted: Sat Jan 15, 2005 6:35 pm Post subject: My Personal Testimony of Not-Quite-apostasy, but Close to it |
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I first have to admit that I haven't yet reached the level where I can make the leap - but I'm getting there. I don't know precisely where I currently am. I've attempted two different compromises - Ahmadiyya Islam, and Irshad Manji's extreme reformist version of it, I guess I'm a combination of the two - but it doesn't seem to be working out right now.
You're probably wondering how I got mixed up in this mess in the first place. Long story short, a combination of being completely fed up with Christianity and information from A&E and PBS. After a brief 11 months of being your typical lefty socialist, I turned to Islam because Islam looked like it cared about human well-being more than divine ego-stroking.
For some time, Islam was exactly as advertised. Then I was told it was haram to listen to music, and my inner critic was temporarily released on bail to play. I started thinking with my brain instead of the Quran, and realized that what was supposed to be a manifestation of every value I hold was really the very opposite. The people at my mosque were the worst hypocrites I've ever met. Even worse, I realized they were only making friends with me because I was a Muslim, not because I was a good person. Then I found myself being bombarded with every philosophical question about God ever asked, and I couldn't answer them from a religious point of view. I realized that Islam was sold to me as a form of freethought, but I couldn't figure out why I felt so torn between Islamic thought and secular humanist thought.
Finally I decided that if Allah had really made such self-contradicting rules, then he could come down himself and tell us they were true, and what the logic was behind them. Until then, I would discard anything that went against my own common sense.
One hadith encourages us to look for knowledge, even if we have to go to China. Right now, I'm doing just that.
_________________
They call me the Seeker
I've been searching low and high
I won't get to get what I'm after
until the day I die
- The Who
Last edited by Truthseeker30 on Sat Jan 15, 2005 7:08 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Mersk
Joined: 16 Jul 2004
Posts: 5764
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| Posted: Sat Jan 15, 2005 6:55 pm Post subject: Re: My Personal Testimony of Not-Quite-apostasy, but Close t |
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| Truthseeker30 wrote: |
I first have to admit that I haven't yet reached the level where I can make the leap - but I'm getting there. I don't know precisely where I currently am. I've attempted two different compromises - Ahmadiyya Islam, and Irshad Manji's extreme reformist version of it, I guess I'm a combination of the two - but it doesn't seem to be working out right now.
You're probably wondering how I got mixed up in this mess in the first place. Long story short, a combination of being completely fed up with Christianity and information from A&E and PBS. For my brief 11 months of being your typical lefty socialist, I turned to Islam because Islam looked like it cared about human well-being more than divine ego-stroking.
For some time, Islam was exactly as advertised. Then I was told it was haram to listen to music, and my inner critic was temporarily released on bail to play. I started using thinking with my brain instead of the Quran, and realized that what was supposed to be a manifestation of every value I hold was really the very opposite. The people at my mosque were the worst hypocrites I've ever met. Even worse, I realized they were only making friends with me because I was a Muslim, not because I was a good person. Then I found myself being bombarded with every philosophical question about God ever asked, and I couldn't answer them from a religious point of view. I realized that Islam took on the guise of freethought, but I couldn't figure out why I felt so torn between Islamic thought and secular humanist thought.
Finally I decided that if Allah had really made such self-contradicting rules, then he could come down himself and tell us they were true, and what the logic was behind them. Until then, I would discard anything that went against my own common sense.
One hadith encourages us to look for knowledge, even if we have to go to China. Right now, I'm doing just that. |
When you find yourself living with people of all religions and not feel uptight about how you follow yours then you'll know Islam is not the choice. |
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eduardo
Joined: 03 Jan 2005
Posts: 57
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| Posted: Wed Jan 19, 2005 7:36 am Post subject: |
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Dear Truthseeker 30:
Even if one thinks that this or that religion, or even all religions, are hogwash -- and clearly you don't -- it can still be important to know what 'hogwash' people believe, because the social institutions one lives under are often influenced or even controlled by people's beliefs, of course. So I offer the following to help you judge the likely impact of Islam on social institutions, vs. the effect of the Judeo-Christian tradition on social institutions.
Daniel Boorstin, Pulitzer prize winner for his book The Discoverers, has in his large 1992 book The Creators, several chapters where he compares Islamic culture to the Judeo-Christian one. Boorstin has a rather vast mind, and though he may be wrong, he cannot easily be dismissed.
He compares scriptures and shows that Islam's God is basically a God of command, of fiat, while the Judeo-Christian God is one of Making, creating. He also shows that the Islamic human being is supposed to exist mainly to serve Allah, while the Judeo-Christian human being is made in the Creator-God's image, and is told to be a maker or creator-in-miniature. Boorstin also points out that while the Islamic God commands, the Hebrew-Christian God made a contract with human beings, i.e., the Covenant. A contract implies a degree of equality. Thus, as Boorstin points out, Jews were among the very few believers who could actually joke about and with God. I could also mention Jacob wrestling with the Angel, and Job arguing with and railing at God. This is a very different conception of God to the Islamic one.
Here are some passages from "The Uncreated Koran," Chapter 8 of Boorstin's The Creators
| Quote: |
The contrast between the Hebrew and Christian views of the Creator and the Muslim view appears wherever we look -- in the creeds, the traditions and the visions of Islam. This, as much as anything else, makes it hard for us in the West to feel at home in Islam. For Islam found the very notion of Creation unappealing...
...The more we read of the Koran and the Muslim God, the more natural it seems that Islam exempted their Holy Script from the world of creation [i.e., asserted the Koran had existed from all eternity and was uncreated]. For the Muslim God, though a kind of Creator, had a character quite different from the God of the Hebrews and the Christians...
...in the Koran the role of the Creator is transformed. The familiar words of Genesis [in the Old Testament] record that God spent six days on the Creation. "And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made." (Genesis 2:2 and 3).
In the Koran God never rests, for he can never be tired.
We created the heavens
And the earth and all
Between them in Six Days
Nor did any sense
Of weariness touch Us.
Surah L, 38
It is no wonder that the Koranic God was not wearied. For He created not by making but by ordering, not by work but by command. The creation of anything occurs when He decrees it into being.
To Him is due
The primal origin
Of the heavens and the earth:
When He decreeth a matter,
He saith to it: "Be,"
And it is.
(Surah II, 117)
Again and again the Koran describes God's fiat.
There are some similar expressions in Genesis [in the Old Testament] of God creating by fiat. “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). But there is a vast difference of emphasis between the acts of Creation in the Bible and in the Koran. And between the character of the Hebrew-Christian God the Maker, and the Muslim God of Fiat. In the Bible, the Creation in the first chapter of Genesis is a historic event, prologue to all the rest of history chronicled in the Book. In the Koran the six “days” of Creation are not the beginning of a story but “signs” of God’s omnipotence and his claim on our obedience. [In the Koran,] [e]verything about us today, how man is benefited by animals, how the sun and moon and stars shine, how the winds blow and change, how the rain falls to nourish the crops, how ships move, and how mountains remain in place – all these command our obedience and our awe of God.
The Muslim Creator-God is notable not only, nor even mainly, for His work in the Beginning, but as an orderer, a commander, of life and death in our present. The Judeo-Christian God is awesome for the uniqueness of His work in the Beginning. Then he may intervene by divine providence. But the Muslim God awes us by the continuity, the omnipresence, the immediacy, the inscrutable arbitrariness of his decrees.
It is He Who gives Life
And Death; and when He
Decides upon an affair,
He says to it, “Be,”
And it is.
Surah XL, 68
After the six days of [the Muslim] God’s ukases, the six days of fiat, the God of the Koran, having no reason to rest, simply mounted the Throne of authority. From there he continued to rule by decree over life and death and every earthly act.
The relation of the Muslim God to his creature man, then, is quite unbiblical. The uniqueness of the biblical Creator-God was in his powers of making; the uniqueness of man and woman too would be in their power to imitate their God and after their fashion to exercise the power of creation. After [the Hebrew-Christian] God created the species in the beginning, he blessed them to be fruitful and multiply [be creative]….This spectacle of Creation shaped and limited Western man’s thinking.
...Why did God create man? The God of the Bible would judge man by his fulfillment of his godlike image. Not so in Islam.
I have only created
Jinns and men, that
They may serve Me.
I created the Jinn and humankind only that they might worship Me.
(Surah, LI, 56)
…The People of the Koran prefer to call themselves Muslims, from “Islam,” the Arabic word for submission or obedience. The Koran repeatedly reminds us that Allah’s creatures are also his “servants” or “slaves.” What clearer warning against reaching for the new? For a believing Muslim, to create is a rash and dangerous act. |
Next are a few excerpts from “The Intimate God of Moses,” chapter 5 of the same book by Boorstin, The Creators.
| Quote: |
…Here [via Moses] was a path leading man to think himself a potential creator. Man would himself then be no mere object or victim or instrument of gods but part of the processes of creation…As the Bible explained in Genesis, the First Book of Moses, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him” (Genesis 1:27).
The perpetual “covenant” [contract, agreement] between a Creator-God and a Man-in-God’s-Image was an extraordinary idea…this God of the Unutterable Name actually entered into an agreement, a covenant, establishing mutual obligations with his God-like human creations…The word “testament” itself is an archaic synonym for “covenant”.
…It was this Covenant between Yahweh and His people that sealed man’s godlike qualities, man’s capacity to imitate God as a creator.
…the Jews, almost alone among believers, could joke about their God. Since they could converse (and covenant) with Him, why not joke with Him too? |
Boorstin also has a brief chapter on Christianity, which in tune with its Judaic roots also sees man as a sort of Creator-in-miniature, i.e., a creature made in the Creator-God's image.
To me, a question thus arises: If, as Boostin concludes, Islam's God is a God of fiat, and Islam is fundamentally a religion of obedience, not creation, then is Islam compatible with liberal democracy, where creativity and freedom are respected by law?
_________________
"IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as the repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am."
-- S.T. Coleridge |
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piggy
Joined: 13 Feb 2004
Posts: 6372
Location: Godwana
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| Posted: Wed Jan 19, 2005 9:29 am Post subject: Re: My Personal Testimony of Not-Quite-apostasy, but Close t |
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| Truthseeker30 wrote: |
I first have to admit that I haven't yet reached the level where I can make the leap - but I'm getting there. I don't know precisely where I currently am. I've attempted two different compromises - Ahmadiyya Islam, and Irshad Manji's extreme reformist version of it, I guess I'm a combination of the two - but it doesn't seem to be working out right now.
You're probably wondering how I got mixed up in this mess in the first place. Long story short, a combination of being completely fed up with Christianity and information from A&E and PBS. After a brief 11 months of being your typical lefty socialist, I turned to Islam because Islam looked like it cared about human well-being more than divine ego-stroking.
For some time, Islam was exactly as advertised. Then I was told it was haram to listen to music, and my inner critic was temporarily released on bail to play. I started thinking with my brain instead of the Quran, and realized that what was supposed to be a manifestation of every value I hold was really the very opposite. The people at my mosque were the worst hypocrites I've ever met. Even worse, I realized they were only making friends with me because I was a Muslim, not because I was a good person. Then I found myself being bombarded with every philosophical question about God ever asked, and I couldn't answer them from a religious point of view. I realized that Islam was sold to me as a form of freethought, but I couldn't figure out why I felt so torn between Islamic thought and secular humanist thought.
Finally I decided that if Allah had really made such self-contradicting rules, then he could come down himself and tell us they were true, and what the logic was behind them. Until then, I would discard anything that went against my own common sense.
One hadith encourages us to look for knowledge, even if we have to go to China. Right now, I'm doing just that. |
Truthseeker30,
As I see it, the guidance of Jesus is to not follow organized religions........it is to be "squeaky-clean", be naked of corruption, to love all His/Her creation, so to be worthy of His/Her audience, to be an individual, alone, facing God alone, this is the only "way" to begin......we must aim to make decisions that God would approve of.
If people would only closely scrutinize the reported sayings of Jesus, as fervently and thoroughly as is the case with Quran, they might find the "right path", I believe this 'christ"-message is clear and precise.
To abandon Mohammed's islam, is not necessarily to abandon one's belief in God, nor to abandon moments of prayer and meditation, nor to abandon social-justice, fairness, good-will, good deeds, etc.
To abandon Mohammed's islam, is merely to be the individual that YOU ARE, to be squeaky-clean so that a "true" one-on-one with the "father" can be established and maintained.
We are all born without language, minds not meeting or iinfluencing through words or concepts, this is the beginning, the path begins here, no new-born can say they know god better than any other, they/we are all knowing of the same un-speakable truth.
Truthseeker30,
[Btw, I don't usually study bibles, nor am I a member of any religious group]
I just did a quick search and found these few verses that might give some clue............
John 3:3 - Jesus answered him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God."
John 3:7 - Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born anew.'
John 3:5 - Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
Acts 11:15 - As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning.
Ephesians 4:15 - Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,
Regarding the "those whom have ears" bit.................... some without "ears" might say.....
John 3:4 - Nicode'mus said to him, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?"
Matthew 13:13 - This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.
Truthseeker30,
Think about these verses outside the context of organized religions.
It's like if a new-born babe could speak, it might say "I am, the way, the truth, the life............".
Mohammed and/or authors and compilers of Quran was/were either lying or hallucinating when he/they claimed that Mohammed had been exclusively chosen by God and sent an angel to dictate god's will, especially given the dispicable and total disrespect for life, for creation, which is espoused in much of Quran.
Truthseeker30,
Leave Mohammed and his Quran behind in history, that's where they are, that is where they belong, with each day we are born again........and one does not need to be a member of an organized religion or read any books, or follow any one else to " see the kingdom of heaven".
Anyway, I wish you well in whatever you do. |
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Puzzled
Joined: 06 Jun 2004
Posts: 46
Location: London
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| Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 3:07 am Post subject: |
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Eduardo:
Very interesting - a real difference between the Judeo Christian and the Islamic God.
Connected with this is that the Islamic God is not a God of love - how can God love his slaves. We all know from our human relationships that you can only love an equal.
Of course Christians and Jews fall short of their ideal, just as Muslims do, but it helps if the ideal itself is worth having.
_________________
People are more important than religion. |
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Vioxxx
Joined: 22 Jan 2005
Posts: 19
Location: Malaysia
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| Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2005 8:02 am Post subject: |
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Hi truthseeker30, 
Glad to know that you wish to seek the truth. Like any human being, we are made to seek God from the beginning. God has put a sort of homing signal inside of us seeking for Him in our inner being. Without God, we have a vacumn or an emptiness within us that we cannot erase. Many people are led astray by the many choices out there be it new age, Islam, Buddist, Hindu, atheist and even christianity.
Many like you have dabble into lots of thing to satisfy their inner craving for a relationship with God. All religions teach us to do good which is logical except Christianity. Not only doing good is enough but in Christianity we must also accept Jesus as our personal saviour in order to be save. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one come unto the Father except through me." John 14:6.
This is in stark contrast with the rest of the world religion above in that doing good alone is the sole determination of qualification to be save. In this regard you do not have to believe any God but just merely doing good and that alone will qualify you for all religions of the world. That therein lies the uniqueness of Christianity.
Christianity is not a religion per se but a personal relationship with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. In this regard, we consider God as our heavenly Father and a benevolent being that we can converse and joke with just as with our earthly natural father.
In contrast, Allah of the Muslim treat his subject as slave to worship and to serve him.  Those who fails to obey him will be punished according to the syariah's law.
Lastly, the message of the bible is a message of love and it is summed up in one verse, John 3:16. Jesus love you truthseeker30. That is why He is willing to die on the cross for you and me and everyone even when we do not deserve it. Islam's Allah on the other hand is a cold and distant god who made human as slave to serve him and is too holy to be seen with his subject. He rule by fiat and decree. Do this and do not do that or else...
The choice is yours to make. Bear in mind, making the wrong choice will be disastrous. One final tip for you. Since the majority of the religion on earth urge mankind to do good but only Christianity urge us to not only do good but also to accept Jesus as our personal saviour, then you would not lose out by taking God's salvation offer and do good at teh same time. This is a win win situation. Of course, being a Christian does not mean only the above two thing but as you grow up in the Lord, you will receive the many wonderful promises contain within the bible. I guarentee that you would not be disappointed.  |
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Truthseeker30
Joined: 14 Jan 2005
Posts: 58
Location: New York
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| Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2005 4:53 pm Post subject: |
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eduardo:
I DO believe there's a way to achieve a higher sense of spirituality. But after following two different religions and finding nothing but hollow, automatic practice in both, I'm beginning to think that all religions just might be hogwash after all.
I've always prided myself on being a man of science and logical, rational thinking, first and foremost. I never believed that the world we live in is merely a bridge to the next life, whatever that may be. I've always believed we have a responsibility to learn and grow as human beings and to leave the world in better shape then it was when we came into it.
This is the way Islam was introduced to me, and the primary reason I became a Muslim.
_________________
They call me the Seeker
I've been searching low and high
I won't get to get what I'm after
until the day I die
- The Who |
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Smiley
Joined: 10 Sep 2004
Posts: 118
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| Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2005 10:58 pm Post subject: |
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| Whats spirituality? |
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Ali Sina
Joined: 13 Feb 2004
Posts: 4607
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eduardo
Joined: 03 Jan 2005
Posts: 57
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| Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 6:17 am Post subject: |
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Puzzled said:
| Quote: |
| Very interesting - a real difference between the Judeo Christian and the Islamic God. |
So it seems: according to Pulitzer prize winner Boorstin, in one religion, the paradigm for human behavior is : to make or create (since humans are 'made in the image' of the Creator). In the other, the main emphasis is that human beings -- who are not made in God's image -- serve and obey that God, who is conceived mainly as commander.
Puzzled said:
| Quote: |
| Connected with this is that the Islamic God is not a God of love - how can God love his slaves. We all know from our human relationships that you can only love an equal. |
Well, maybe that's true in some sense. But one can love a child or a dog. Is the dog an equal? Still, there seems to be something in what you say. I would add that love in its deeper sense can only be a free response -- it can only come from the innermost person, never as a mere response of obedience. Love and mere obedience are contradictories to a degree. Where love is central, there human freedom will always be an important factor.
Truthseeker30 said:
| Quote: |
I DO believe there's a way to achieve a higher sense of spirituality. But after following two different religions and finding nothing but hollow, automatic practice in both, I'm beginning to think that all religions just might be hogwash after all.
I've always prided myself on being a man of science and logical, rational thinking, first and foremost. I never believed that the world we live in is merely a bridge to the next life, whatever that may be. I've always believed we have a responsibility to learn and grow as human beings and to leave the world in better shape then it was when we came into it.
This is the way Islam was introduced to me, and the primary reason I became a Muslim. |
Modern Judeo-Christian religion is often hollow. I wanted to show that its most central paradigm -- if I can call it that -- namely the human being as a creator-in-miniature, a being 'made in the image' of a Creator-God, has very different social ramifications than the Islamic paradigm of obedience to a God mainly of command.
I agree with you that a higher sense of spirituality is possible -- I think one today is forced to go in a similar direction to the scholar Schleirmacher -- who emphasized the need to rely on religious experience rather than on dogma.
The same emphasis on experience over dogma holds for Peter Berger, who wrote The Heretical Imperative, and who remains some kind of a Protestant. In emphasizing experience, one must be able to include the experience of thinking, of course. In modern life, thinking is usually a somewhat 'abstract' experience one does not usually associate with 'higher' reality. An idea is usually felt as shadowy and of less substantial reality than something 'concrete,' like an apple.
But there seem to be some little-known 'higher' modes of thinking at least as full of reality and life as any 'concrete' experience -- I am thinking of experiences Plato may have had and certainly alluded to -- later Plotinus, still later Swedenborg, and in the 20th Century someone like Rudolf Steiner. Such thinking would be a doorway to the 'spiritual world' -- a world of non-material realities -- the gods speaking. This is where Smiley's question comes in though it also seems relevant to Truthseeker30:
| Quote: |
| Whats spirituality? |
Well, to begin with, it would seem that 'spirit,' if it is anything at all, must be something somehow polar opposite to, yet intimately related with, matter. And 'spirit' would perhaps be that out of which matter gradually evolved. Coleridge said matter was 'coagulated spirit'. Or again, one might expect that If a piece of matter cannot occupy the same space as another piece of matter, then spirit, perhaps, would not have this restriction -- different 'spiritual' or non-material beings could occupy the same 'space', could flow into each other's inner being and mingle at their very cores.
But In the end, such explanations are of limited value. They can only be pointers in the direction to look for an experience. One can try to give definitions or explain the color 'green' to a person who has never yet seen it, but if green is not directly seen, all the explanations will help but little. But it should be remembered that 'directly seen' can include the kind of spiritual seeing attained through some 'higher' modes of thinking. Thinking can become a higher experience within experience, though this is rare, and does not have to do with being a scholar or even a scientist, though scientists might have some advantages both in reaching it and in remaining sane having reached it.
As you mention that you strive to be a rational person, Truthseeker30, I might suggest Owen Barfield's Worlds Apart, as the most rational introduction possible to Rudolf Steiner's work. A less difficult but still challenging intro by Barfield is the group of articles published as The Rediscovery of Meaning. Or Steiner's own Philosophy of Freedom. is a very powerful intro if one works through the whole thing. Some physicists have been profoundly influenced by Steiner -- for example Henri Bortoft (worked with physicist David Bohm who worked with Einstein), whose book The Wholeness of Nature tries to revolutionize the way scientists conceive parts and wholes and their relations, or Arthur Zajonc, who wrote Catching the Light.
These books are all written in the ordinary logical, rational mode -- but help one to grasp what Steiner is doing when elsewhere he writes or lectures 'out of higher worlds'. Barfield somewhere describes Steiner's work as "Romanticism come of age". Barfield held that Steiner's 'research' into higher worlds was in many ways akin to romantic poetry, meaning not of course that it was about love between men and women, but the broader sense of romantic poetry -- namely that through imagination it finds life and hidden spirit in nature. And this life and spirit are not merely 'projected' subjectively into the world -- but to some extent are actually present there -- the romantic poet's works affect us partly because something real is seen, however imperfectly.
Steiner was romanticism "come of age" , according to Barfield, because Steiner tried to ground his poetic intuitions more rigorously in terms of epistemology and science -- and claimed they had more than aesthetic value -- they also had cognitive value and a degree of objectivity that could be tested. Steiner offered a path anyone, he claimed, could follow, so as to test his research.
But he also emphasized that if someone looked at his reports about spiritual beings doing this or that, and if someone were then to ask -- are these statements about spiritual beings accurate or innaccurate -- that would be missing a large part of what is in his 'researches'. Steiner was more interested in the process of thinking, than in its results. The results of thinking would always be imperfect and to some degree or other innaccurate. But in the process of thinking, particularly as Steiner learned to develop it, lies an experience -- an experience of spiritual beings and of a non-material reality that is as concrete, rich, and alive in its own way as nature and matter are materially.
In ways that are still difficult to understand today, Steiner managed to develop a kind of thinking that is not the abstract gray thinking we usually experience. I am not speaking of all of Steiner's work -- I mentioned that the Philosophy of Freedom, for example, is done in the ordinary abstract logical mode, though it to some extent serves as a bridge to other modes. These other 'higher' modes are displayed in numerous lecture series given by Steiner -- and one will know better how Steiner meant what he said in these non-ordinary statements if one has first read the Philosophy of Freedom, which is an epistemological foundation for the rest of the stuff. Some of Steiner's reports and researches pulse with immaterial life and reality, and gradually convey to the focused mind the direct experience of a real spiritual world encompassing the material one. Sometimes, to follow Steiner's thinking process when he is reporting his spiritual experiences, is to engage in a kind of thinking that also involves feeling and will -- indeed the whole person -- to such an extent that thinking becomes in some ways akin to shamanism -- a mode of leaving the physical body and traveling in a non-material one in non-material worlds full of living form and feeling. To follow his researches closely enough is to enter into a kind of superconsciousness -- by which I mean only that it is qualitatively distinct from ordinary consciousness and that it is distinctly more imbued with 'substance' and 'reality' and intensity than ordinary consciousness. Or so it seems to me.
_________________
"IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as the repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am."
-- S.T. Coleridge |
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Truthseeker30
Joined: 14 Jan 2005
Posts: 58
Location: New York
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| Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2005 7:01 pm Post subject: |
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Well, it's official: I'm now an apostate.
_________________
They call me the Seeker
I've been searching low and high
I won't get to get what I'm after
until the day I die
- The Who |
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Kantipala
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
Posts: 299
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| Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2005 7:22 pm Post subject: |
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| If it was so hard for you to be with out spiritual direction and confused. It is easy to see why muslims are so agressive in holding to there views. They only have one crutch to stand on, and 21st century is kicking it away. |
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gupsfu
Joined: 06 Jul 2004
Posts: 7919
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| Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2005 7:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Truthseeker30 wrote: |
| Well, it's official: I'm now an apostate. |
Welcome to humanity, Ts30!
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Truthseeker30
Joined: 14 Jan 2005
Posts: 58
Location: New York
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| Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2005 7:40 pm Post subject: |
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| gupsfu wrote: |
Welcome to humanity, Ts30!
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lol
indeed, my friend.
Thanks, but I think your welcome is unnecessary. I merely called myself a Muslim for three years. I never left humanity.
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They call me the Seeker
I've been searching low and high
I won't get to get what I'm after
until the day I die
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Truthseeker30
Joined: 14 Jan 2005
Posts: 58
Location: New York
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| Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2005 7:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Kantipala wrote: |
| If it was so hard for you to be with out spiritual direction and confused. It is easy to see why muslims are so agressive in holding to there views. They only have one crutch to stand on, and 21st century is kicking it away. |
Pleeeeaaaasssssse. Spiritual direction was never something I lacked. My problem - and I'm certain Mr. Sina can back me on this - was that I found it difficult to set aside a belief that had been firmly entrenched in my brain for so long. I carried a few habits with me even after formally setting Islam aside - wasn't until recently I was able to let them go. I still avoid pork, but that's more the fault of my sister's rabid vegetarianism.
Wait 'till I write my formal apostasy story. I'm a writer, so you know it's gonna be a whopper!
_________________
They call me the Seeker
I've been searching low and high
I won't get to get what I'm after
until the day I die
- The Who |
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