“Return to spirituality. Forget about religion.” – God (from the book Conversations With God, vol 2, Neale Donald Walsch) I am going to write out that paragraph from the book here, just really for my own journaling. This question comes up again and again, and touches me at many levels. So God says “forget about [...]
Posts Tagged ‘religion’
The old religion question
Posted in Flashes, tagged faith, God, Neale Donald Walsch, organized religion, religion, spirituality on April 20, 2012 | 2 Comments »
Brown stuff across the world
Posted in Flashes, tagged Catholic, religion, shit on December 6, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
This is informative: Swedenborgianism: We are all full of shit, but it’s God’s will
Sacrifice and pain
Posted in Sermon writing and preaching, tagged going to war, pain, religion, sacrifice, sermon, war soldiers, Word of God on August 2, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
This Sunday I will be preaching on the topic of sacrifice. What a weird topic in some ways. Our culture has few notions of sacrifice. Maybe going to war, soldiers traveling to a far-away place to fight, involves sacrifice. But sacrifice really means to make holy, not the giving up of something treasured. Anyway, the [...]
The story we tell
Posted in Flashes, tagged Abraham, future, Hicks, reality, religion, spiritual path, story, Truth on July 14, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Abraham gives this guidance: “Tell your story as you want it to be.” We tell a story about our lives. An old story. – Let me tell you what I think, what happened to me the other day. Let me tell you what I don’t like and why. Let me tell you how it is. [...]
Delighted with aliens
Posted in Aliens, tagged aliens, Earths in the Universe, extraterrestrial life, New Church, religion, solar systems, space, suns, Swedenborg, universe on May 24, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I belong to a Swedenborgian church. I am well satisfied with this. For multiple reasons. One of these reasons is aliens. This religion and its teachings is one of the very few that straightforwardly and unequivocally believe in intelligent human life on all other planets throughout the universe. For Swedenborg, the 18th century revelator and [...]
Angels Are Calling My Name
Posted in Sermon writing and preaching, tagged celestial, heaven, mantra, prayer, regeneration, religion, sermon, spirit, vision on April 11, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
(Sermon by Stephen Muires, Feb. 2011.) Today I want to describe a vision. A vision that is at the core of religion, of every religion, and at the core of our lives as human beings. It is a vision of heaven in us. You may have heard people say that heaven is inside us. It [...]
Feeling good
Posted in Flashes, tagged good, human, New Church, religion, Swedenborg, Truth on November 8, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Writing the title of this post the thought comes up that “feeling good” may be seen as a cheap catch phrase and not an instruction about living. However, I feel good about “feeling good.” Swedenborg goes on and on about good and truth. Good and truth this. Good and truth that. Harmony of good and [...]
Forms
Posted in Flashes, tagged Bhagavad Gita, God, Jehovah, Jesus, Lord, religion, Swedenborg on October 8, 2010 | 1 Comment »
“When one of my faithful [disciples] desires with all his faith to worship me in a particular form, I take that form.” (Bhagavad Gita) Why does the Lord represent Himself in so many different ways? He is Jehovah the Creator God, He is the Son doing His father’s will, He is a lamb, a shepherd, [...]
Do we do spirituality? (part one)
Posted in Flashes, tagged church, heaven, Lord, religion, spirit, spiritual growth, Swedenborg on September 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Is the New Church spiritual? Or is it a religion, or even (just) a church? How do I know if I am in the New Church? Is a New Church person religious, or a church member, or spiritual? Or all of these? Does the modern understanding of spirituality match at all with a New Church [...]
No reluctance
Posted in Flashes, tagged attraction, heaven, Jesus Christ, Lord, prayer, religion on September 10, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Here’s one more insight about prayer. Another angle, another prompt, another encouragement: “Prayer is not forcing God’s reluctance; it is taking hold of God’s willingness.” (Phillip Brooks) I never have to wonder if it is OK to ask for something from the Lord. He begged him, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me [...]
Levels of comfort
Posted in Flashes, tagged church, comfortability, learning, regeneration, religion on September 6, 2010 | 5 Comments »
“When we diminish the brain rhythm from beta to alpha, we put ourselves in the ideal condition to learn.” (source) I want to look at levels of comfort.Should learning be comfortable? It is science today that learning best happens if our state of consciousness is slightly different from the usual, habitual one in which we [...]
Language is flexible
Posted in Flashes, tagged Bible, church, Lord, preaching, religion on September 2, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
“If a language doesn’t have a word for “behind,” this doesn’t necessarily mean that its speakers wouldn’t be able to understand this concept.” (source) We already instinctively know this. It’s the power of poetry, as an example. A few well-chosen words that vaguely circumscribe a situation can evoke a powerful image of the experience. Doesn’t [...]
New Church web sites
Posted in Flashes, tagged church, religion, spiritual growth on August 28, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I have been looking at New Church web sites. They are mostly very nice. Lots of information. A smooth, almost corporate look. But what is the impression they leave on a person that comes across them? One of these two… How am I going to climb this wall? OK, looks rough but let’s give it [...]
The four emotions
Posted in Flashes, tagged anger, church, fear, healing, joy, love, reality, religion, sadness, spiritual growth on August 28, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
We are alive and feel things. If we didn’t feel things, we wouldn’t be alive. Even if the feelings are unconscious. These are the four basic emotions that each person feels: 1. Fear 2. Anger 3. Sadness 4. Joy This means that I feel one of these, at least, every moment of the day. When [...]
The God point
Posted in Flashes, tagged church, God, healing, religion, spiritual growth on August 27, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
In 2009 I attended a Mind-Body-Spirit exhibition in Philadelphia. One presentation was by a Japanese man, who didn’t speak English. So he had this girl translating every sentence. He talked about chi healing, if I remember right. Anyway, in his talk he said proudly that no matter what a patient came with he would use [...]
Humanity
Posted in The Sacred, tagged belief, church, God, holiness, Lord, providence, religion on August 27, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
(A section from my dissertation on “The Sacred”) When we say we are human we mean that we have a will and an understanding. This is more essential than talking about the design of the human body. The body is called “an obedient servant” (DP 124.2), whereas “the will and the understanding … make up [...]
Unbelief
Posted in Spiritual Reality Center, tagged Laurel, love, presence, religion, spiritual growth on August 8, 2010 | 1 Comment »
“He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief.” (Matthew 13:58) There have been small conversations at Laurel 2010 in which genuine puzzlement was expressed why not more people come to this yearly camp. Out of the population of adults to whom information about Laurel can be expected to be available, only [...]
A personal God
Posted in Flashes, tagged Christopher Alexander, God, mystery, religion on July 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
A personal God: what does that mean? Yes, I know this truth: the Lord Jesus Christ is the God of heaven and earth. He is the personal God, the face, the door. He is human and divine at the same time, and He exists outside of time and space and so is right here and [...]
The Jesus stuff
Posted in Flashes, tagged death, God, Jesus Christ, Lord, reality, religion, Truth on June 12, 2010 | 1 Comment »
I am re-reading one the more amazing of the Near Death Experience accounts that exist. It is the book What Tom Sawyer Learned From Dying. The man was really called Tom Sawyer, and his NDE was long, detailed, and un-categorizable. Here’s a link to some extracts: http://www.neardeathsite.com/sawyer.php When Tom stood before the Light of God [...]
Big visions
Posted in Flashes, tagged God, prayer, religion, spirit on June 9, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I trust in the good. I trust that the world is getting better each day. I trust that God gains more and more footholds. I envision people becoming more enlightened on a daily basis, all over the world. I foresee that the balance between good and evil in the world will shift upwards: the best [...]
