Suffering By The Will Of God? Posted in: Aggressor-Victim, Suffering and an all-powerful benevolent God

That God is benevolent and completely in control, yet at the same time bad things happen in this world is a problem for logical and rational thinkers. I think. If we embrace any idea that artificially distances God from something he/she is absolutely in control of, i.e. to explain the suffering of this world without implicating God … as most religions tend to do in one form or another (law of karma, natural law, punishment for sin, our fault, the devil) … even though at the same time believing not a blade of grass moves without the sanction of God aren’t we deceiving ourselves and turning our backs on logical and rational thinking? …

How are we all always serving God? Posted in: Divine Expression, One And Different, What are we doing here?

1. God chooses to taste and explore rasa.
Our life adventures, dark or light/conscious or unconscious regardless, contribute, albeit in a small way, to the completeness of that exploration. How? Our personal experiences of emotion/feeling, by dint of our enternal jiva individuality, together with our current lifetime tailored conditioning, have a uniqueness about them, and thus value because they add to the completeness of God’s exploration. …

It’s not that I don’t believe in karma per se Posted in: Divine Expression, The Self Divine

When I say I don’t believe in Karma, it’s not that I don’t believe in karma per se, but I don’t believe in karma as reaction to thought and/or deed that one is obliged to accept. I find that sort of understanding fundamentally incompatible with the divinity of the soul in that this idea of karma is simply a thinly disguised version of against-my-will-obliged. …

Self Divinity Posted in: The Role-play Game, The Self Divine

Bondage of karma, fallen soul etc., … this type of thinking can go unchallenged/sit comfortably with the idea that we are not God. That our being a separated part and parcel of God more or less minimises the fundamentals of our continued divinity. I feel this is a false argument … much in the vain of the passing of huge amounts of time makes the ideas of natural selection / random mutation / man from monkey / big bang / primordial soup / something-coming-from-nothing, seem plausible. …

Spiritual ABC: Everyone is brother / sister Posted in: Seeing the Divine

How strange it is that cultivation of the sense of ‘other’ is prominent in so many of the religions of the world? Surely understanding that everyone (and I’m not just talking about human beings) and everything comes from God is at the very ABC beginning of spiritual vision? That being the case, we are all family … brothers and sisters so to speak. …

Non-judgementalism Posted in: Freedom From Judgement

Many religions consider freedom from judgement of others a saintly quality. But how attainable is it for a person of faith? Especially when at the foundation of their existence are a number of huge personal judgements. For example

What I believe to be truth IS true (I judge it to be true)
My beliefs are not actually beliefs at all … they are knowns – revealed to me by God
I know a lot about God … certainly enough to know that others who disagree with me are wrong
The goal of life is prescribed by God

How is it possible to maintain such convictions, and at the same time whole heartedly celebrate the divinity and perfection of others – and especially when their life paths are opposed to your chiselled in stone truths? …

Natural Talent – Reincarnation Posted in: Divine Expression

If you accept the idea of reincarnation, then you can easily explain the natural flare and talent people have for certain things … this is simply not the beginning of their cultivation, they are picking up from where left off in previous life.

Rather than becoming disheartened … I’m just no good at such and such (i.e. compared to someone else) … instead think ‘anything is possible if I choose it’ … those who I look up to are not at the beginning. …

Why Me? vs. How Does It Serve Me? Posted in: One And Different, The Self Divine

Achintya-Bheda-Abheda is a school of Vedanta representing the philosophy of inconceivable one-ness and difference. In Sanskrit achintya means ‘inconceivable’, bheda translates as ‘difference’, and abheda translates as ‘non-difference’.
Achintya-Bheda-Abheda, as explained at Wikipedia

The big difficulty for me with this philosophy is how to overcome the inconceivable part. That there is a simultaneous one-ness and difference between/with God and everything (us included) that emanates from God. …

The Problem With Karma Posted in: God On Our Side, Suffering and an all-powerful benevolent God, The Self Divine

One often finds the sanskrit word karma translated as action or work. But sometimes, and especially in the western mind, people take it to mean reaction rather than action, or something subtle that binds one to the cycle of birth and death (samsara) — administered by some sort of unseen cosmic debt collecting task-force requiring balance in the universe be restored. …

Abortion and the Bodily Concept of Life Posted in: The Self Divine

What if life is not something that comes about because a body in a womb has reached enough maturity to survive outside the womb? What if life exists even prior to conception? If this is true, how does it change the way we understand termination of pregnancy? Let us not cloud the discussion with religion. Let us neither cloud with rape, nor liberation and equal rights for women. …

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