The self didn't really exist in the first place. Its an adventure. Enjoy it. Nihilism is dumb, don't do it. Unity doesn't contradict separation. Separation is necessary to have forms ; forms are necessary to have story ; logos is I AM. Infinity can't be diminished - it can play forever, wearing all the masks. Love is being.

Where are we at in Luke?

Okay, enjoy your evening. If I come across as angsty, sorry, it's just what happens - I get a bug up my butt and have to criticize everything.

I don't think either one ever had a mystical connection to God. I do appreciate the beauty of their rituals and singing and I think it helps in discovering that mystical connection yourself.

Protestantism lost its power when it was liberated from persecution. They no longer had anything to prove, so they decayed rapidly. The ability to read the Bible was like opening Pandora's box, and most of what came out was just too much for most people. So the stories became flattened, easy digestible, and lost the depth of symbolism. I don't think I've ever found a verse that didn't have at least two ways to understand it. Not that I've looked exhaustively... But you suggest a deeper meaning to people and they think you're crazy. The same person will then insist that every story is literally true, which is also crazy, when divorced of its symbolic meaning. So the result is, mainline Christianity is now mythology.

The political churches decayed slower, but they got a head start. Maryology is useful for teaching women and teaching tolerance and virtues, but it is not present before the churches were gathered together by threat of violence under the state of Constantine. What Maryology really represents is the cult of Isis, which went into hiding when Christianity took over. Its in line with the other saints, which are roughly analogous to the archetypal gods they replaced. Pray to them if you want ; I'm not going to judge whether a person's disposition to an ideal is idolotry - but to use them as an intercessor to the intercessor is absurd, imo.

Well... I criticize everything. Hope it doesn't hurt, haha

I like the lawless part.

Return to Greek on that passage - I think you will be interested in the other possible translations. The church is not the organization Peter led - that's a representation of the church. The map is not the territory.

Its not you that I'm reacting to, but the year of trying to learn from the Eastern Orthodox and ultimately finding it lacking. I've made an assumption, but I think you are representing that worldview.

There is no Gnosticism. What the internet has settled on as gnostic beliefs is really just one group that was extreme enough to satisfy the internet's collective appetite for the weird. What is now all grouped together into the category of gnosticism is the many separate movements which eventually gave rise to the political church. Before 325 AD, there was no canon, the Trinity was much more loosely understood, and symbolism played a much greater role in Christianity. The EO church gradually tightened the interpretation of scripture allowed, labelling anything outside their momentary window of acceptability as anathema and heresy, until now their reading of the Greek right in front of their faces lacks the depth of meaning which those "gnostic" symbols retained. I am not saying all gnostic beliefs are correct. I am saying that the church pretending to be the straight path has lost meaning, which is to be expected in a political organization.

Backing up just a bit - although there is no Gnosticism, there is a gnosis. That's knowing Christ, knowing God, knowing what it means. Its this :

Where is Christ? Saying you bow to none but Christ is great, but its meaningless without knowing where Christ is, what "Christ" means, the history of the word... But most importantly, where. Within.

Okay, **_what_** is the kingdom of God? Its Jesus. As you pointed out the other day, Israel is Jesus. So, not a place. Its a process or a state of being. Look within.

The Bible uses dualism to teach you. But for there to be duality, there must be unity. Duality of what? Of what medium? Often you can see things presented in a polarity. One extreme is presented first, then the opposite extreme. Oftentimes these extremes are broken into two different stories by our Bibles - but their positioning can't be accidental, being so oft repeated. You are meant to meditate on these dualities. Seeing unity does not preclude duality or separation of created things. Seeing created things does not preclude unity. The goal is to achieve unity with God - in church they call it wearing the mantle of Christ. You don't gain magical powers... But you do gain calm. You came from God, which is symbolically the descent, and you return to God by knowing Christ. Knowing... Gnosis. One way to know a thing is via contradistinction from what it's not - here we're utilizing the descent, the fruit of knowledge - duality. If it worries you that coming from God is a conflation with God, consider that an infinite thing can never be diminished by its subtraction or division.

To give the pretender church a bit of credit, there is certainly merit in placing Christ outside of yourself. You literally can't know Christ without humility, and serving exoterically will require humility. But don't make an idol out of it! To serve Christ is not to make Jesus into an idol. It is by recognizing the separation between you and Truth, that you can attain Truth - but its not your choice - its a mutual recognition. There's no way to say these things without falling back on polarity. Truth/separation, Christ/antichrist, humility/pride, sight/blindness ... All the same. But you can't see that if you don't go within!

And... Sorry if I jumped to the wrong conclusion about your response to that discussion. A bit more humility would have prevented that, ironically.

Flee from pride. If found within, cut it out. If found in others, treat them fairly, but escape.

This is why I wholeheartedly reject the churches of man, who usurp the throne of God. They are so idolatrous that they can't even read that and comprehend it.

Flee. I tell ya... escape.

#god

"even if heterodox"

It appears you bow to an idol. Please feel free to tell me how that could come from anything other than idolatry.

Once you've done ten, it becomes easier to do another ten.

Once you've done one set of 20, you might as well do another.

And then do a third, cuz it feels good.

And with three sets done, doing two more is no biggy.

And that's how you get to 100 reps.

#exercise

I hold animism in high esteem - it puts a powerful concept front and center : that every thing is a symbolic representation of God.

And I think Protestantism lost its truth during the boomer "revival" - boomers, outliers notwithstanding, are too materialist and have no concept of the Truth which was kept alive secretly hidden from the tyrannical and satanic "catholic" churches - that which became called Protestant after it surfaced and survived.

Protestantism desperately needs a return to its roots. A real revival, not a version of Islam with Christ grafted on.

useful info, that ^

I'm doing the same. It worked great at first, but I've been gaining weight again lately. I started eating more, just keeping it in the eating window

"Heed these words, you who wish to probe the depths of Nature: if you do find within your Self that which you seek, neither will you find it outside. If you ignore the wonders of your own House, how do you expect to find other wonders? In you is hidden the Treasure of Treasures. Know thyself and you will know the Universe and the Gods"

- Oracle of Delphi

I think people really did live that long, or longer. I do think most of the bible at least has allegory woven in, but it makes sense that people would live much longer than we do now

Me too! Its not entry level, for sure

I've had the effect, but never used creatine. It happened when I was trying veganism - in retrospect, not a healthy move, but I think it was calorie restriction that caused me to need less sleep.

We really just don't live long enough, and the brevity of our lives ensures the brevity of our lives.

In the last few years, my main interests have been physical health and mental health. Or, the material and the spiritual, to make it more entertaining.

I have a biology textbook that I love - but it's really just the book for first year bio, and a med student would have to tackle 100x the information in this book. Eight years to get a medical PhD is ridiculously fast, and I think that only gives entry level knowledge of physiology. By the time a doctor is truly a healer, they are old and nearing their end. If even then...

On the other hand, I am borderline obsessed with Carl Jung. He was a psychotherapist who went further than any therapist has ever gone - so far and so deep, academia can't handle it and studiously avoids studying his work. And yet, I think he was only on the doorstep of what is possible. How many of Jung's lifetimes would be required to really enter the mansion of psychic possibility?

Healing the body is pointless without healing the mind - the fallibility of the body is a reflection of the fallibility of the mind. Conversely, healing the mind while the body is diseased is merely a temporal relief before the bodily eschaton. A real healer would have to master both - the intricacies of physiology and the mechanics of mind.

A century of study would only be an apprenticeship. Eight years to a PhD would be considered a joke. Two centuries of practice is probably the minimum for a competent doctor, in a world where real healing occurs and yields the tangible fruit of long life.

I'm kinda pissed off about this...

#Longevity #study #psych #health #healthstr #medicine

It can be delayed, though. There's no reason it has to happen now. We could have 10,000 years of freedom with BTC before that happens.

Why?