God Is Not To Blame Posted in: Suffering and an all-powerful benevolent God

So long as a believer characterises this world as primarily a place of ignorance and suffering they have a problem in connecting it closely with God. Especially if they also embrace the idea that not a blade of grass moves without the sanction of the lord. And God is all powerful and all loving. I believe it is for this reason that the majority of religions seek, through various means, to separate God from the goings on here. …

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Why ‘Why We Are Here?’ Is Important Posted in: Belief and Truth, What are we doing here?

No disrespect intended, but I am not a fan of comebacks like ‘Don’t worry about why you are here … just worry about how you are going to get out’ or ‘You don’t need to know why you are here, you should simply focus on how you are going to get out’.

The main problem with these types of non-answers, these deflections, is the presumption that we are not here for good reason(s). …

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Perfect Arrangement Posted in: Perfection in Seeming Imperfection

I propose that the jiva (individual soul) is never at odds with God but is always functioning exactly as intended. It cannot be otherwise. It is a perfect arrangement befitting a Perfect God. That we are fallen souls, or for that matter identify ourselves in any other way whatsoever, is simply a construct which facilitates, provides a stage for, a particular flavour of our joint lila. …

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Does Religion Cause War? Posted in: Belief and Truth

I’d argue it’s not religion

It’s lust for certainty where problems begin.

Faith is belief in something unknown. Something you choose to believe. Denying you don’t really know, and surrounding yourself only with like-minded people, doesn’t make something known. Why should it? How can it? That self-deception may be cosy for a while. But it easily leads to demonising of anyone does not embrace the party line. …

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Fear and White Lies – Justified? Posted in: Belief and Truth

Given the context that an individual has already freely chosen to embark on the spiritual quest to understand self and God, it may be in the initial stages that their motivation for perseverance comes mainly from fear of failure. And therefore enlightened teachers may speak that language for the sake of helping such neophyte practitioners stay with the plan. And that such preaching may justify the use of white lies because it serves the neophyte in relation to their chosen objective. …

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The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (documentary) Posted in: Films, Seeing the Divine

The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (Netflix documentary)

When Norwegian gamer Mats Steen died at age 25, his parents mourned what they thought was an isolated life. It was only once they had access to his blog that they discovered the deep friendships he created virtually before passing away from a degenerative muscular disease. They were unaware that Mats had long been leading a vibrant digital life that had left a profound impact on a community of fellow gamers.

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Faith Posted in: Faith

Regardless of how spiritually aware my guru might be, his/her/their reality is not my reality. Therefore, for me to accept what they tell me of their reality in place of my own is necessarily a faith thing. There may be a variety of reasons I have that faith … gut feeling, philosophical resonance, reasoning, the experience of being in the presence of such a person etc, etc. …

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The Main Problem With Denying Ones Divinity … Posted in: The Self Divine

The main problem with denying ones divinity is that one tends to think of their suffering in terms of ‘why me?’, or ‘I’m being punished from transgression of some pre-defined code of acceptable conduct’, whereas ‘how does this serve me?’ becomes more the mindset when self-divinity is accepted. Perhaps that is why Bhagavad-gita 2.15 states

yaṁ hi na vyathayanty ete
puruṣaṁ puruṣarṣabha
sama-duḥkha-sukhaṁ dhīraṁ
so ’mṛtatvāya kalpate

O best among men [Arjuna], the person who is not disturbed by happiness and distress and is steady in both is certainly eligible for liberation.

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Self = Soul With A Body ≠ Body With Soul Posted in: The Self Divine

You are a soul with a body. Immediately I heard this idea, it made perfect sense, resonated as truth, and changed everything for me. But when I shared this – what was for me a profound revelation – I was surprised that most people rejected it out of hand. 40+ years later I still find this to be the case. Why does this explanation of self not appeal to so many? …

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Lost in translation – English and the material world vs the concept of anādi Posted in: Divinity, What are we doing here?

Within the Vaishnava tradition, the conditioning of the souls in the material world is said to be anādi – beginningless. If English speakers wish to understand the finer points of the Sanskrit word anādi, there are probably a number of English words they should steer clear of, for example …

forget – because the word infers previously known
when – because the word infers something happened at some point in time, and before that point it had not happened
manifest – because the word infers previously unmanifest
fallen – because the word infers previously not fallen

Why might clear understanding of anādi be important? …

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