Christian Mysticism & Divine Feminine

[Dedicated Mind]

Originally Posted by seekerman

The thread is just a microcosm of the discussions taking place 2000 years ago when a smallish carpenter's helper suddenly appeared on the scene and told the folks in a religion established for 2000 years that the religion wasn't the true religion anymore. In fact, the carpenter's helper said, if you continue to follow that religion (which was established by God Himself), you'll burn in hell.

Same song today, just a different verse. The established religious folks say no, forget anything new spiritually, it's over. If you explore and seek deeper spiritual truths, they are really lies and you'll burn in that big torture chamber of God. They say that God FINALLY established a religion 2000 years ago which would never be changed, He was just experimenting with the religious stuff prior to that.

Religion will always attempt to take freedom from individuals and attempt to mold those individuals in the image of their understanding.

Don't let that happen, brother.

I appreciate your encouragement seekerman and I appreciate Blume stating his position. Kabbalah and gnosticism are not doing anything for me since they are mainly extrabiblical, but I'll continue looking into them. Mysticism, on the other hand, I'm just beginning and Blume may be right that there is nothing there, but I want to find out for myself. I am totally against the spirit that says don't investigate at all, take someone's word for it. No thank you, I am strong enough in my faith to dig deeper into nonmainstream views. I don't understand why people set themselves up as authorities into what people can study or not.

Blume, I've watched about 6 Kabbalah lessons and none of them mention the occult. I think you fail to comprehend that there are different streams of kabbalah and that Bnei Baruch kabbalah is not into the occult. even though they are a new age system of belief.

[Amanah]

DM - I'll be honest with you, I took World Religions in college and have read books from many of the Main Religions. By far the best is:

"Your Life is your Message," by Eknath Easwaran

the book is out of print but you can get it used thru Amazon.com.

I learned passage meditation with it, and turned it right around and used it to meditate on scripture.

The thing about stress and anger and other problems we have is that the battle is in the mind. If you can learn to control your mind, you can control your response. Passage meditation teaches you how to do that. If you use the Bible for your passage instead of the Gita, you are keeping your mind stayed on scripture, yet learning how to control your thoughts. It's pretty awesome really.

[Amanah]

myticism is really about being in the present moment.
being here now.
not letting the past rob you of the present.
not letting the cares of this life rob you of your joy.

There are no principles that you can learn from Hinduism, Buddhism, ect, that you can't learn from the Bible.

[Amanah]

ok, here you go DM, read this:

http://www.yogajournal.com/practice/1196/

for your passage, use scripture.

[Amanah]

http://www.yogajournal.com/practice/1196/


Mystics often compare the mind to a lake. In most of us, the surface of this lake is so agitated that we can't see the beauty and resources that lie below, waiting to be tapped. Yoga, as Patanjali defines it, is nothing more or less than stilling the mind, so we can see that longed-for beauty and let our life be flooded with those largely unsuspected resources.

Most of the time-honored methods that sages have devised to achieve this tremendous state seem to fall into two categories: those that allow the mind to quiet down by not giving it attention and those that aim to channel the mind's attention into a single focus. This focus helps us withdraw our attention from, and finally subdue, the endless stream of mostly random thought-making that is the mind. Some methods advocate using an external object, like a candle, or using the breath, or using something more internal. The most common internal device has always been a mantra—a charged word or short formula that you silently repeat, concentrating on it more and more deeply at the expense of those pesky thought waves.

There is, however, an alternative method. It's called passage meditation, and it was introduced in this country in 1959 by Eknath Easwaran. (For more on Easwaran, see Luminaries) In passage meditation, the object of attention is not an image or an external object but an inspirational passage chosen from any of the world's great spiritual traditions and memorized ahead of time. One great passage to start off with is the Prayer of St. Francis.

To use this method, try to establish your practice in the morning, before fascinating activities like breakfast or reading e-mail have taken over. Sit in a comfortable position, with your back, neck, and head gently erect in an anatomically straight line. Then close your eyes, breathe deeply and softly, and begin silently reciting the words of the passage in your mind, as slowly as you can without losing their meaning.

You want to let each inspiring word "drop like a jewel into the depths of your consciousness," as Easwaran's oft-repeated phrase instructs. There is no need to think about the meaning of the words. When you're giving them your full attention, their meaning can't help but sink in, leading to all kinds of positive developments. As we assimilate the inspired words, we find ourselves being spontaneously kind, for example; we find that addictions and unwanted behaviors of all kinds drop away as we come to resemble more and more the ideals that the passage we've chosen holds out to us.

For this to happen—and this is really the core of the technique—do not follow any associations that may come up, even apparently "pious" ones. When any such distraction arises, you can do one of two things about it, depending on how long it has taken you to realize you're not on the passage. In the case of the odd distraction, the stray thought, simply bring your attention back to the words of the passage. Don't get annoyed with your mind or take note of the distraction in any way; rather, refocus your attention on the passage. But the mind is tricky, and sometimes a distraction will take over and go on its merry way for minutes on end before we realize what's up. At this point, we should "pick up the mind gently," as Easwaran often said (getting angry at it will only be a second distraction), and bring it right back to the beginning of the passage. Boring? Exactly, but that's partly the point. You are serving notice to the mind that you are in charge—that for a half hour, at least, it is going to learn to obey you for a change or risk what it hates most: being bored.

We Become What We Meditate On

The appeal of this technique is the absorption in beautiful, inspiring words that express the highest ideals of the world's great spiritual figures. Since we choose the passages ourselves, the ideals they express are ones that appeal to us. Some people relate better to the unadorned truths of Buddhism, others to the rich rhetoric of love in the writings of, say, Rumi or Teresa of Ávila. Choose whatever is most meaningful to you; your tastes will probably broaden anyway as your practice continues. (In fact, if you stick with the same passage too long, you'll find that it becomes stale and that its words lose their evocative power. It’s a good idea to be on the lookout for new passages to add to your practice before that happens.)

Along with immersing ourselves in positive content, we are slowing down the mind as much as possible without losing our focus; as many ancient texts say, this can have infinite results. As Easwaran put it in his collection of inspirational passages, titled God Makes the Rivers to Flow (Nilgiri, 2003), "Slow, sustained concentration on these passages drives them deep into our minds. And whatever we drive deep into consciousness, that we become." Or as the Buddha says, "All that we are is the result of what we have thought."

Practiced regularly, passage meditation can gradually bring us complete mastery of our thought processes—which, as the Buddha reminds us, means mastery of our lives. It is a powerful, welcome tool for breaking unwanted habits, resolving tangled relationships and entering wonderful new ones, realizing our maximum effectiveness at whatever we do, and sensing a deep purpose in our lives.

Of course, no form of meditation works very well all by itself. If we jump up from our cushion and run out into the same-old same-old, not only will we erase the effects of meditation, but we could end up throwing our lives out of balance. For this reason, passage meditation is combined with seven other practices in Easwaran's Eight Point Program. These practices are: using a mantra of our choice as often as possible during the rest of the day; slowing down (avoiding hurrying, allowing enough time for meals, and generally simplifying life); training our attention (refraining from "multitasking," giving our full attention to whatever we're doing); training the senses (choosing carefully what we eat, read, watch, and listen to); developing an innate concern for other people's welfare; cultivating spiritual companionship (spending time with those whose company promotes our growth); and reading spiritual (sacred and inspirational) literature every day. Practicing these do's and don'ts reinforces our progress in passage meditation throughout the day.

So Ancient and So New

Passage meditation is a classic technique with similarities to the Christian lectio divina (sacred reading) and many other spiritual traditions. Mystics from Isaac of Syria to Simone Weil have described their struggle not merely to inwardly recite a scriptural passage but to do so with unbroken concentration; Isaac even relates going back to the beginning when he's drifted too far off. Patanjali admonishes us to still the mind; the Bhagavad Gita goes further by telling us, through Arjuna, to "bring your mind back every time it wanders away." Easwaran simply adds a practical definition of back (namely, to the passage) and away, meaning to anything else. (In our secular age, the psychologist, philosopher, and author William James said this faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again is "the very root of judgment, character, and will.")

Interestingly, passage meditation seems to be stumbled upon less often in the East than in the West, where it often appears as a special type or goal of prayer. The reason may be that we in the West are so intellectually oriented (as Easwaran once said, "You people are very word-conscious") and not very devotional—at least before we've made some progress in meditation.

On the other hand, Easwaran also said that we Westerners have a determination that even the most devotional Indian might envy. In any case, the combination of devotion and determination—which is what passage meditation aims to eventually produce—is powerfully healing. And the world has never needed it more.

[Dedicated Mind]

Originally Posted by Amanah

DM - I'll be honest with you, I took World Religions in college and have read books from many of the Main Religions. By far the best is:

"Your Life is your Message," by Eknath Easwaran

the book is out of print but you can get it used thru Amazon.com.

I learned passage meditation with it, and turned it right around and used it to meditate on scripture.

The thing about stress and anger and other problems we have is that the battle is in the mind. If you can learn to control your mind, you can control your response. Passage meditation teaches you how to do that. If you use the Bible for your passage instead of the Gita, you are keeping your mind stayed on scripture, yet learning how to control your thoughts. It's pretty awesome really.

Amanah, thanks for the suggestion. I found 3 books by this author at avax and one of the books is entitled Passage Meditation. Not sure if this is the same one you are referencing. Not sure if you are interested but I really liked The Perennial Philosophy by aldous huxley of Brave New world fame. He explores the commanalities of the religions. I'm sure you can find a review on the internet, I'm about to start reading Mysticism by evelyn underhill. a classic from 1911 not sure how good it is.

[mfblume]

Originally Posted by seekerman

Truth is a strange thing in the bible, it changes with time (thankfully). For example, would the following scripture be truth for today? Was it truth when it was written? What changed?

Lev 20:9 For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him. 10 And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

No, truth does not change. How God dealt with sin changed. That is one covenant to another. See? The covenants were foretold to change. It does not mean truth changes, though. Truth is different from ways of dealing with sin. Sin is still sin as much as it ever was. But how to deal with it changes. So truth never changes. Jesus never changes. He does not contradict what he once said. Truth is never contradicted. Difference in dealing with sins is not contradiction of truth.

[mfblume]

Originally Posted by Dedicated Mind

I appreciate your encouragement seekerman and I appreciate Blume stating his position. Kabbalah and gnosticism are not doing anything for me since they are mainly extrabiblical, but I'll continue looking into them. Mysticism, on the other hand, I'm just beginning and Blume may be right that there is nothing there, but I want to find out for myself. I am totally against the spirit that says don't investigate at all, take someone's word for it. No thank you, I am strong enough in my faith to dig deeper into nonmainstream views. I don't understand why people set themselves up as authorities into what people can study or not.

Blume, I've watched about 6 Kabbalah lessons and none of them mention the occult. I think you fail to comprehend that there are different streams of kabbalah and that Bnei Baruch kabbalah is not into the occult. even though they are a new age system of belief.

I have studied ABOUT Kabbalah for some time off and on. of course they are not going to mention the occult. They know it turns people off. New Age is occultic, though.

My conclusions, anyway.

[mfblume]

Originally Posted by Amanah

Being a Buddhist would actually be boring
wake up
spend an hour in meditation
stand on your head a bit
eat some vegetables
make sure you don't step on any bugs

Yeah, I agree. lol

[Dedicated Mind]

Originally Posted by Amanah

myticism is really about being in the present moment.
being here now.
not letting the past rob you of the present.
not letting the cares of this life rob you of your joy.

There are no principles that you can learn from Hinduism, Buddhism, ect, that you can't learn from the Bible.

i see it as trying to comprehend and apply a verse such as 2 peter 1:4

4Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

and 1 John 4:17

17Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.

would anyone like to comment on the profoundness of these 2 verses?