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Permalink Reply by Eric H-L on 5th mo. 12, 2010 at 8:37pm

"the self imagining itself to be separate from God"

This conversation is helping me feel less separate from those who have a different way of talking about the same challenges.

"But I don't think God is hostile to "me" as an "imagining-myself-separate" entity, just working towards a more correct relation... which is not, I so far believe, meant to be annihilation of this character God keeps creating as "me"."

The idea of the self as part of God's process creation is mind expanding to me. Somehow my thoughts got stuck on a one time creation. Thank you for helping unstick the gears.

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 5th mo. 13, 2010 at 4:06pm

I've learned a lot from Erich Schiffmann's yoga book: (readable at http://www.movingintostillness.com/teachings.html ) which struck me from the first as more quakerish than much Quaker writing, despite some NewAgeisms in style.

Another take on the 'bad-natural-self vs good-Christ-in-self' duality is something I just found, written by 'Sufi Sam' Lewis (a pre-Beat San Francisco spiritual leader):

"When the ego is controlled the passions are mastered and the forces are transmuted, not destroyed. Every function, every activity, every part of man’s life is basically good. There is nothing evil in the body and there is all evil in the body; this depends not upon the body but upon whether the will is subjugated or the ego is subjugated. Enslavement of will leads to all evil and symbolically places man in an Egyptian captivity. The emancipation of will power frees the body from this slavery in Egypt, so to speak, and finally makes out of it the Temple of Solomon, that is to say, the abode of Divine Peace, in the Promised Holy Land, the accomplishment of life’s purpose in the temporal sphere."

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