Comment by Forrest Curo on 2nd mo. 26, 2014 at 7:40pm

'Eating': 'lack of faith in the sufficiency of The Presence to provide nourishment'?

There are activists who either dismiss the idea of God altogether, or seem to believe that if they want God to do something right, they'd better do it themselves.

And then there are activists led by the presence of God within them to take action in accord with God's purposes.

Is this post an example of that, or is it something else?

Comment by Patric Garrison on 2nd mo. 26, 2014 at 9:13pm

Perhaps the problem is the alignment with a specific political group.  Neither group really fulfills the will of the Spirit, but that does not mean we should not attempt to hold them accountable to the Spirit.

Comment by Keith Saylor on 2nd mo. 26, 2014 at 11:22pm

Thank you Patric and Forrest. I appreciate your responses. They help me learn to use my words better. I'm struggling to work through toward clarity of expression. So, thank you for engaging. 

The original post is an attempt to articulate Presence as peace, love, equality, justice, etc., fulfilled and manifested in personal experience. Presence is the fulfillment. To use outward means to impose these concepts on others is out of Presence. 

Forrest, this post is an example of neither. I am going to type freely; so I reserve the right to revise and extend these remarks. My sense is there is not much difference between your two examples. The consciousness and conscience of the former are anchored in and informed by outward beliefs or concepts without reference to an outward transcendental God. The consciousness and conscience of the latter place an outward God between them and the beliefs or concepts they are anchored in and informed by. The latter mediates meaning and purpose through an outward Being. However, the beliefs and concept are still external only giving through a metaphysical agent. 

So I would add to your list those who know and experience Presence as purposeful and meaningful in itself. Presence is action. In Presence there is neither God or no God. Faith and Trust in Presence is the purpose and meaning, not in outward actions.

Peace, Love, Justice, Equality, Long-suffering, is Presence; they are mere abstraction otherwise. 

I'm not quite there yet Forrest, but the words are forming.

Patric. Would you mind further explaining what you mean by holding "them accountable to the Spirit?" I keep wanting to say: "Presence holds all accountable, not me." I really like to work through this with you to see whether we are of the same mind. 

Comment by Forrest Curo on 2nd mo. 27, 2014 at 12:17am

There is exactly one thing, entity, being

available to

be

"present"

in, to, around, with

any person

and it may not be what you mean by "God", but "God" is the customary, accepted word/name for this.

Comment by Keith Saylor on 2nd mo. 27, 2014 at 11:44am

My conscience is cordial regarding to the first part of your statement, it is not regarding "God" is the customary, accepted word/name for this.”

It depends on when and where in human history your data point for “customary” begins and ends. For much of human history God was and is a term qualified by various and sundry ideas about the nature of an external and separate entity living and directing human beings from a metaphysical place. These outward ideas (scripture and theology for example) about God anchored and anchors consciousness and informed and informs conscience. God is also by custom a noun.

To equate a consciousness anchored in and a conscience informed by Presence with the term God is to obfuscate or darken Presence in a contextual framework girded by baggage that is difficult, at best, to unpack. The term God is poisoned by abstract thought - outward ideas about God rather than direct experience; Presence.

As with political ideals, religious ideas about God are idols that avert from a consciousness anchored in and a conscience informed by Presence. When ideas (memories/scripture) about God anchors consciousness and informs conscience, Presence is absent in human being. Many people, in their use of the term God, readily admit referencing an external divine governance of the world … an outward supernatural influence imposing its dictates in the world of experience thus inculcating purpose and meaning.

Presence is meaning and purpose experienced directly in itself not in ideas about the meaning of Presence. I understand I could write: God is meaning and purpose experienced directly in itself, not in ideas about the meaning of God. However, to do so, I would first have to go about decontaminating the term God of abstract ideas and memories (such as scripture) that binds human consciousness and conscience to a nominative God rather than verbal or experiential (experimental) Presence.

So, while my conscience is tender and open to the intent behind that assessment that  “God is the customary, accepted word/name for this.” I cannot, in good conscience, equate God and Presence because the term God carries too much abstract baggage that obfuscates or deprecates a consciousness anchored in and a conscience informed by the immediacy of Presence.

Comment by Olivia on 2nd mo. 27, 2014 at 3:03pm

i believe if i understand correctly, Keith is moved to speak God as God on-site-in-Keith, and applies that to most situations.   so for him, letting God work through you is a level of "distance from"   -- am i correct, Keith?

i understand though that what forrest is emphasizing is very different, part A from part B:  people who act on their own as if they are separate (part A) versus people who let the Light within them do the action and fuel their own self (part B).

the problem with this aspect of these discussions seems to be that friend Keith is leaving behind all the words that we frequently use to mean the same things, i think. the referencing of  "God" for many of us can evolve into a larger reference or reality as we evolve and accept it to mean this larger truth. 

i find that friend Keith wants to go his own separate way on these things, for surely deeply held reasons, but simply makes the mistake of assuming sometimes that others of us are speaking outside of that which he now has discovered.   it may be a matter instead that we don't all use words the same -- probably is that.  and also that since we don't use words the same, it gets rather hard to inform one another's journey when the customary words are separated from...rather than used in the search for common understandings.

for me the word God is all Light and all Presence.  it wasn't exactly like that years ago and has actually meant different things to me as i've been at different ages, but for the moment i feel clear that it has always been me who was changing, not God's reality....and that i am just discovering now that God is actually all THAT, and all THIS, and always was. 

Comment by Olivia on 2nd mo. 27, 2014 at 3:07pm

i probably should add, to stay on the initial topic, that i have to presume the same things apply to the words "political activism".  what some of us mean by that is very wise and Light-fueled, not a thing of darkness which is a lack of faith at all.  but yes, it can be done outside of that Spirit as well...   best not to write it off, i'm sure.    Jesus was pretty darn politically active himself and could actually make a solid argument for divine Presence as an ultimate force of political (and all other) activism.

Comment by Keith Saylor on 2nd mo. 27, 2014 at 3:31pm

Dear Olivia,

i believe if i understand correctly, Keith is moved to speak God as God on-site-in-Keith, and applies that to most situations.   so for him, letting God work through you is a level of "distance from"   -- am i correct, Keith?

This is an incorrect understanding of a consciousness anchored in and a conscience informed by the immediacy of Presence.

Comment by Keith Saylor on 2nd mo. 27, 2014 at 3:45pm

Dear Olivia,

Jesus was pretty darn politically active himself and could actually make a solid argument for divine Presence as an ultimate force of political (and all other) activism.

Please share with me some examples of Jesus' political activism.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 2nd mo. 27, 2014 at 5:04pm

'John' is about 'the meaning of Jesus' rather than 'what actual Jesus actually did.' So the most accurate accounts will be in the synoptics, which don't have him driving out [the sacrificial animals] with a whip -- but do indicate that he and his supporters took over the Temple courtyard; this had to have been basically peaceful (or the Roman troops looking down on the scene from the nearby Antonia Fortress, on a hair-trigger footing during the annual festivals, would have intervened with very effective violence.)

Politics were certainly involved; or it might be better to say religion/politics was involved. Jesus was probably a covert claimant for the literal Kingship of Israel (Remember all those Christmas songs; remember that it was Romans who crucified him on that charge.) His conflict with various Jewish authorities was religious and political in that he was supporting rural traditions of the Covenant against the written (but oppressively-interpreted) traditions of the Jerusalem priestly elites, who were living quite luxuriously on goods extracted from a malnourished, sometimes literally-starving peasantry.

But his closing-down of the Temple was distinctively religious in orientation, like Jeremiah's prophecy of the Temple's destruction -- which Jesus quoted -- for basically the same reason: The use of religion to provide protective coloration and sanctuary for rulers robbing the poor was emphatically contrary to God's intentions.

Other peaceful demonstrations by the Jewish peasantry during that same period -- were quite 'political' in appearance; ie they came in a large body to the Roman governor -- but purely religious in content -- They asked him to please remove the pagan Roman standards from Jerusalem... and when the governor ordered his troops there to draw their swords, the crowd knelt down with their necks exposed and offered to be killed if he would please remove those standards.

I think that political activism of later times was originally based on such models, and on the example of the prophets. It can also be practiced in a purely secular way, for purely secular ends. But most of the time there's considerable overlap: People wanting to help put God's intentions into practice, with more or less actual faith variously involved, the precise mix not even necessarily clear to the participants themselves....

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