Morality is grounded in nature not institutionalized religion.

This is the teaching of the Holy Grail.

The 12th Century didn't only profoundly see through the meaningless hypocrisies of institutionalized religion and realize that authentic humanity is grounded only in our spontaneous hearts, but they further and incredibly realized that being true to yourself is "nature itself" raised to its highest form, as opposed to absurd conflicts with the "supernatural" or "metaphysical" (the babble of intellectualizing theologians and philosophers).

Alas, this vision has been mostly lost to fanatical religious cults such as Baptist Big Bang Armageddonites and George W. Bush, whose limitless hatred of nature is matched only by rapacious Texas energy corporations.

It must be taken in that these people HATE NATURE and see "it" only as a planet sized money cow.

But God without nature is a meaningless abstraction. Indeed, "God" is a metaphor at best for a mystery beyond concepts and institutions. In other words, nature.

This is all of a piece with the terrifying truth (to most of the human race) that ultimate realness is where we already are. This, as they say, is "It" my friends, unless you'd rather masturbate away your lives in 65 I.Q religious games.

But birth and death have NOTHING to do with catechisms, pamphlets, and fear of life sermonetts. They have to do with the spontaneous raw ongoing ness of immediacy which is itself reality process. Indeed, it is exactly this "untheoretical" raw ongoing ness which is the land of souls, not libraries jammed with dead abstractions.

Indeed, the thinking about point of view IS the pseudo identity of human beings, but that "about which" it thinks is nature, nature, and nothing but nature.
The 12th Century knew this. They knew, for example, that love is a creation of spontaneous nature. An ancient Chinese word for nature is TZU JAN, which means (very roughly) that which is so of itself. And so nowing is the of itself soing of that which is so of itself.

In a sentence: nowing is realitying is selfing. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be.

Our country is now controlled by people who are hypnotized with religious/nationalistic games. They are literally insane (i.e., TOTALLY out of touch with reality).

But this is the evil foam, merely, on an ocean of bottomless mystery, and this mystery is the reality in which we live and move and have our being. It also doesn't answer to the foam.

So we should keep the faith that from the depths of nature will still come our salvation. Also, that these depths are also ultimately "our" depths.

So much sorrow. So much despair. So much loss. But keeping the life and death mystery faith will save us in the end. It always has. It always will.
**********************************************************************
W. Christopher Epler (Bill)

<http://theliberationofrealism.blogspot.com/>

is, indeed, a great adventure. The way humankind has viewed things has changed greatly over the years. Watch the movie "Mind Walk" for an interesting discussion of the evolution of thought.

#3 of the Ten Sufi Thoughts:

There is One Holy Book, the sacred manuscript of nature, the only scripture which can enlighten the reader.

Interesting things, those Ten Sufi Thoughts.

http://www.sufiorder.org/ten_thoughts.html

:hi:

people claim is completely false and an illusion based on fundamentalist crap.

"fundamentalist crap"

Thanks, that turn of phrase make my night.

peace, Bill

:P

causes unnecessary friction.

I agree with the foundation, and to my surprise these folks agree with what I wrote recently. But is it so much a part of human nature that 'we' have to bash etc? Can we talk about this?

I don't know about unnecessary friction, but I do know that people who rampantly murder other people (children included) in the name of God need a turn a phrase as thousand times as stronger than this one. Why should it always be us who are "courteous" and under stated when dealing with utter monsters. And not only utter monsters, but "righteous" utter monsters? Behind EVERYTHING now happening on our bleeding planet and dying republic (if not dead) are righteous religious fanatics from all the institutionalized Middle Eastern religions. This is the core cancer that is killing everything.

So, yes, magnify the phrase by a thousand, and then we're (barely) be in the ballpark. How else can you talk about righteous, genocidal mass murderers?

'Our country is now controlled by people who are hypnotized with religious/nationalistic games. They are literally insane (i.e., TOTALLY out of touch with reality).'

But you're talking about 'righteous religious fanatics from all the institutionalized Middle Eastern religions. This is the core cancer that is killing everything?'

Fooled me.

it SICKENS me how many people think that without religion we would all be raving lunatics. THE RAVING LUNATICS ARE MORE THAN LIKELY THE RELIGIOUS.

K&R

a friend who I highly respect was saying that the God/dess are not 'here to worship on our knees, they are here to mentor us. It is when we start a worship process that we get into trouble. The gods of the bible are now stuck there/trapped until the last bible is burned. It is because humanity trapped those gods that we are in the trouble we are in now. (This includes the Quran and Torah).

The god/desses are a mutual respect society - they do not exist without us and if we respect them in the proper manner, we are enlightened and go upon a proper path.

Just some food for thought.

it's the awareness, the sense of awe that you can get from a work of art as well as devotion. But that feeling is innate, as natural as joy and fear and just as primitive.

I think it's organized religion that bugs you ... taking over the responsibility of procreation from nature itself, yes ... it's a perversion. But that's our limited rational minds coping w/the ultimate big picture. Most of us will never grasp it, so we settle for whatever we can have.

A book, a movie, television - they're all modern descendants of theatre, where catharsis emerged. If you want to find the origin of love, look there ... and don't blame a divine being you don't know.

I'll blame any being that claims divinity is served by igonorance, and any believer who dares to claim another does not know divinity. The organized versions of religions are in fact heresy and they are the ones who blame the divine. You are blaming the divine, but are so stuck in dogmatic status roles that you leap right past the plank in your own eye to complain about the speck in the OP's eye.

Sounds like you can not take the plunge to me. You should and wash away the smug and the prejudice.

upbringing gave me a wealth of experiences that still feel awesome ... almost the thrill I get from a balanced equation.

Not only are you hostile, you're projecting it on me. If you can't share ... sorry. I try.

as an institution. I believe this threatened the established church's hold on power at the time until they temporarily squashed it. Organized religion had for centuries tried to separate humankind from nature and it's pulse. I believe this was more due to hubris and for the sake of personal power and control of their subjects. I also believe this formed the basis for their view of the Native American as nothing but savages.

I agree with the concept of nature being part of God, through my own primitive scientific observation, I've come to think of the entire universe as an uterus. The shapes, visibility; or lack thereof and function of objects such as the rocky planets, asteroids and comets, Dark Matter and the Big Bang it self supporting the basis of my hypothesis.

It seems ironic to me that humankind or organized religion believes it can create artificial constructs to capture the grandeur of a higher intelligence when the creation they claim to be God's is so readily available, only to be trashed by them without regard.

Thanks for the thread, Bill.