do you have any ideas on why it seems that atheism, and its kissing cousin agnosticism, seem to be so powerful in transmitting their worldview to successive generations?
I don’t know that any statistical study has been done, but observation and inference has led me to the conclusion that a child of nonbelievers or anti-faith parents tends to retain that perspective more so than does a child of parents of strong faith. That’s always been a conundrum to me. In particular, because the occurrence of the social pathologies which typically follow in the wake of most non-faith upbringings tend to be so prevalent. One would think that just by looking around and saying to oneself, “hey..which worldview seems to be more effective?“ would caution many to not be so hasty in abandoning the faith of their parents. But the allure of college and the materialist influence of society and social media appears to be overwhelming. Any thoughts?
And a shout out to “John“ who seems to have mistaken your relaunch of the Q&A offering for a Q+Q+Q+Q&A offering. Lol.
I think the answer to this is fairly simple. The creation myth controls the mind. Most people, even most Christians, today, do not believe in the creation narrative of the Bible. Man fashioned from dust, Adam and Eve, sinless in the Garden. The tree, the snake. The fruit and the fall. Instead nearly all children are taught in school, on television, in the movies, in society, and often even by their Christian parents and pastors, that we evolved over millions of years on a planet that is the result of a random and careless explosion untold aeons ago. I have long said that, *if* evolution is true Christianity isn't. People fight me on that but it's true. If we evolved from a proto-ape then we were not created from the dust of the ground by the hands of God. Leftism, atheism, all the things which Christians bemoan colonizing the minds of their children, are *the logical consequence* of the scientific creation myth. If everything started off as a random explosion and is the result of random, meaningless mutations, then of course all ethics and morality is just a set of social constructs open to renegotiation. And how can the sacrifice of Jesus make sense unless there was an actual, literal, original sin? How are children going to believe the stories of a book even their pastor says is actually, scientifically, incorrect on page one? They can't. In my mind evolution and all that goes with it is simply an alternative creation myth for an alternative religion, and attempts by the Church to shoe-horn Jesus into it are both misguided and frankly pathetic. Christianity isn't a random collection of beliefs but the logical consequence of the stories of Genesis. Take that away and it stops making sense. People stop believing it because they can't, even if, as you say, what they *do* believe (that life is meaningless and nothing matters) tends to make them unhappy.
Its actually even simpler than this. Atheists and many in academia are well versed in using complexity and long mathematical proofs to hide behind and fool those too lazy or inexperienced to understand the flaws present when tested against real world applications.
Trust me, Im an engineer lol.... See I just did it to you ;)
Thank you for your thoughtful writings. My question is about how we can be certain that what we think we know/intuit on the spiritual journey is actually truth. We are really mysteries to ourselves and our ability to deceive ourselves is astounding. Emotions lead us astray, thoughts seemingly arise on their own, from who really knows where and unsurprisingly humans disagree on much. Regardless, we feel that we ought to respond to what seems like a calling even though we don’t really know what awaits on arrival.
I think desiring certainty can prevent you from moving forward. To my mind, what we are to do is pursue the Highest Joy with Discernment. What I mean by that is that a lot of things might bring us a great deal of joy in the moment, shooting heroine for example, or having sex with a beautiful woman in betrayal of your wife... but which, if we think it through, would ultimately be not a small net negative. And so I think what you do is you sit down and you say, okay, how do I find the Highest Mode of Fulfillment. Of Meaning. Of Joy. Right? And then you come up with an answer and you start working towards it.
But this answer isn't going to be very good. It's like saying, "I want to walk to Montana" but all you have to go on is the Sun and the stars, so you just vaguely figure out where North is and start moving. You're not actually pointing at Montana yet, you're, in reality, going, say, decidedly North East and if you continued in a straight line you'd hit Ohio. But you have no way of knowing that until you've walked far enough where you can look around and say, "wait a minute... this doesn't look right." And then you reassess, reorient yourself, and try again. You're probably *still* not heading the right way, but you're closer to the mark than you were, and you may have to do this reorienting and reassessing many times before you find the true path.
I think it's the same in the spiritual life. We simply *can't* know, exactly, how to get where we want to go. But we start heading the direction we think is best and maintain an openness and humility to being proven wrong and changing course as we go along. It's a winding road, and it would be nicer if we could just walk a straight line, but we can't, and moving, even in not exactly the right direction, is better than staying still your whole life waiting for someone to hand deliver you a map. The map's not coming. You just gotta start.
Not a question, but a comment, one reason for the incarnation was so God would have a body to perform a human sacrifice with to bear our sins in a body on the cross to be pierced for our transgressions, Romans 3:25,, 1 Peter 3:24, and many more verses, God is definitely not the God of the philosophers and quite primal in how he does things, a converted Brazilian voodoo priestess once said, “I once worshipped false gods with the blood of goats, now I worship the true God with the blood of Jesus”
Yes, I have long suspected and have tried to communicate that the primary barrier facing Christianity today is overmuch philosophizing. You simply *don't* get that in the stories of the Bible or the stories of the saints (aside from a few). I think philosophy can be a path to a deeper relationship with God for some people, but for the majority I think it is simply an avenue to muddy the waters of the mind. The problem with thinking is that an intelligent person can convince themselves of anything, as I think modernism has shown pretty well. With enough "Reason" and "Thought" you can prove that up is down and black is white and, as Plato discovered, that a featherless chicken is in fact a human man. In fact it seems to me sometimes that the goal of a seminary degree is nothing other than to teach people to be clever enough to interpret texts in a manner 180 degrees the opposite of what they appear to be saying.
For those reasons I do not much believe in allegoricalizing the Bible, or treating its stories as metaphor. For the most part I take them at face value, and try to do the same in all areas of my life, grounding myself in the five senses and the body. If you approach it that way God, as you say, comes off as quite primal. Not unloving or dumb, but primal, a God of lions.
A paraphrase of Martin Luther - reason and logic are whores, they will serve any master. My premises I reason from - Jesus is risen from the dead - I call Jesus the grand anomaly, as I look through history and my view of reality death is king, except for the resurrection, so I am placing all my bets there. The other premise is my meeting the Spirit of God as tangible and present to me personally as part of reality, the Spirit that pointed to Jesus as the way to Him.
Can you expand your “defense against the dark arts” type posts? I think there’s a lot of practical advice in there. Can you talk about AI and where you think this is leading? Why do you think Christianity is so divided into all these sects?
Hi John, yes I need to go more into that in the future. A good overall look at how the demonic attacks people can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Exorcism-Battle-Against-Satan-Demons/dp/1645850617 , but perhaps that's not exactly what you were looking for. I will meditate on this and see if anything more comes to me.
As for A.I. I don't think it's leading anywhere good but I have that suspicion about most technology. I am something of a Luddite even though I kind of know how to code. I think the primary risk of A.I. is the further blurring in people's minds between The Screen and Real Life, and I think that's a blurring most won't have any immunity against. Already people accept mostly unquestioningly whatever comes through The Screen, when photo-realistic images and video and audio can be conjured almost instantly, I think we'll be so far down that rabbit hole that it will take a miracle to pull out of it.
The simple answer to your last question is that demons are real and actively roaming the earth. They spread division and confusion, and people are often unable to see past such things due to their own pride. In my own case, I have somewhat threaded the needle of all the various Christian sects in that I am a Catholic, but I often attend and Eastern Rite Church, meaning I worship and experience the liturgy exactly as they would in the Eastern Orthodox Church. On top of that on Wednesday nights I go hang out with the Baptists. I don't believe there is as much keeping all the sects of Christianity apart as some others do, and I hope I'm right about that.
What do you make of hypnosis or self hypnosis? How is it people tend to overcome alcohol or cigarette addictions with just a few sessions of this? Have you considered the relationship between self hypnosis scripts, affirmations and prayer?
Hypnosis is I think much misunderstood and yes I have seen the relationship between affirmations, prayer, and hypnosis. Many people, like my father-in-law for example, believe it is total bunk, but that, I think, is because they have in their minds a cartoonish version of hypnotism involving a black and white spinning wheel or being mind controlled by a man swinging a watch.
In reality hypnotism happens to us every time we watch TV, or listen to an engrossing story, or are mesmerized by a beautiful song. In such states we are quite open to suggestion and those making media are well aware of this. Propaganda works quite well in story form, precisely because the viewer is in a suggestible hypnotic state. If you just come out and say, bluntly, "the earth is dying because we pollute"... a lot of people will bristle and reject that message, regardless of whether or not it's true. If however, you sneak in climate messages in a show like The Last of Us or something, people won't notice, but they will adopt that idea as part of their worldview.
I have never tried self hypnosis, so I can't speak to it, but I have studied hypnosis a little. My entry into the field began with a lot of curiosity regarding "hypnosis recalled memories" of alleged alien abductees and also "past life regressions". Budd Hopkins did a lot of work in the former area. Unfortunately from all I can gather, hypnosis does *not* seem to recall memories in most cases, but rather to invent them. I'm not dissuaded totally from it's usefulness in such regards, but I have grown quite skeptical. As a tool for things like quitting smoking or promulgating propaganda though? It seems to have it's uses.
The Eucharist is a huge topic, as it is the central ritual of worship in the faith. I am thinking over a post that relates to it now actually but it may not be out for a while. Briefly, part of The Eucharist is the bringing together of all things and the redemption of all sins. So, in the Eucharist you have, arguably, the most heinous sin, cannibalism, being made the centerpiece of the holy life. It is part of Christ's decent into and harrowing of Hell. It is also a reversal of the eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. So, the first Eve took the fruit down and ate of it, condemning mankind, the second Eve, Mary, put the "fruit of her womb", back on the tree and we eat of it for salvation, thus transforming the tree which damned us into the Tree of Life we can once more eat from.
What do you make of Christ whipping the money changers? It is an image that is not congruent with people’s modern image of Jesus. Can you talk about perhaps why this more rigorous aspect of Christ is not often talked about in church and what are it’s ramifications or implications?
See below comment on those passages from Luke and Matthew, it was his Father’s house and as Father’s Son he had the right to clean house, the Second Coming will be a far grander display of his authority. This is not the god of the philosophers or tamed neutered varieties of Christianity and various other spiritualities. However all this violent judgment stuff is his prerogative, the historical Christian church and Christian’s has at too many times taken onto itself what belongs to God alone in this area.
You made a post about prayer that was very insightful. Can you talk about fasting? What do you think are the spiritual benefits of it and why do you think God asks us to fast?
Thank you for the compliment. I can talk about fasting but I must admit I am not very good at it haha. My strengths have always been in *doing* things, not in abstaining from them. Sloth has never been an issue, over indulgence has. For example, the only reason I am not fat is that I exercise all the time. I suffer from gluttony but you wouldn't know it to look at me.
One angle to look at fasting from is that it is a form of temptation practice. You abstain from something that isn't wrong to do (eating) to strengthen yourself against temptation so you can abstain from something that *is* wrong to do. There is also a general clarity of mind and body that comes when it is very "husked out" and emptied and I believe that abstaining from food can also be a kind of sacrifice to God when we make petitions of him.
When I was reading the Gospels during my conversion process at one point I paused and said this about Jesus, out loud, “Who does this guy think he is!” One of the NT titles for Jesus is skandalon, a word meaning stumbling stone or snare, the root for our word scandal. The eternal authority, centrality lordship, pre-eminence, primacy of Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of God (you and I get to be a son of God, lower case) is one of the scandals of the NT. It won’t be Buddha, Mohammed, Krishna sitting up there on that throne with the Father with the Holy Spirit flowing out.
How come jesus never talked about things like “energy” but you see mention of “energy” in eastern practices and methods to harness or use this “energy”? Why do you think Christ only emphasized prayer and none of these methods?
I think the Christian model is not so much that energy needs to be cultivated or harvested but rather that barriers to such energy need to be removed. In the past the analogy has been made to a crystal covered in dirt. If we only remove the dirt, we will be reflectors, emanators, projectors, of the Divine Light and Energy without even trying. I think it's just a different model of how Divine Energy flows.
Because he was into the Holy Spirit, “Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him” Luke 3:21, also note Luke 11:13, 24:48, John 7:37-39, John 14:16-17, 26, Acts 1:8. I practice tai chi and qigong and the natural body thing they generate is not the same as the personal Holy Spirit.
The end point of classic Buddhist and Hindu meditation practices is to transcend, go beyond, leave behind the temporary, limited human individuality. Jesus took his body with him and is eternally Jesus of Nazareth, that’s our model, prayer is being a temple of the Holy Spirit, an individual human filled with the Spirit in the presence of God, face to face, you will receive a new name, but are forever you in a new creation. Christians are to “pray in the Spirit” I meditated eastern style for years, meditation is like being peacefully in a closet sometimes seeing things in the dark, just me, myself and I, praying in the Spirit is like being in a sunlit flowery meadow with the life and presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit actively there.
Some people relate what’s currently happening with AI with writings from Christian authors like Tolkien and CS Lewis. What are some interesting connections you have noticed from some of their works that seem to map to or March what is going on in the world today?
Yoshi, simple question. I remember a few posts back, you said your goal (ideal, dream?) was to be the successor, in one way or another, of the great Christian writers of the past history (if I’m not mistaken, you mentioned Chesterton, Lewis, and Tolkien - sorry, didn’t take the time to look up the direct quote.) If that is correct, are you thinking of publishing a book, or something of the sort, that would delve more deeply into a particular topic?
Hi Bruce and thank you so much for all your support. I enjoy seeing your interactions.
I will, hopefully, soon compile a lot of my writings here into a specific theme, likely with some additional commentary which will go deeper. The working title right now is "Theology with a Spear: Christ the Eternal Om." Maybe this isn't a good title. Not sure. But Theology with a Spear, as a concept, has really resonated with a lot of people and I think encapsulates the embodied, not in your head message I'm trying to get out there. I hope it will come out soon.
I have also written some fiction, which I'm currently piecemeal publishing over at modernpulp.substack.com . It's piecemeal because this is my method of proof-reading it, a daunting task. It's otherwise finished though, two novels. I wrote another book long ago on the Joyful Mysteries but it was my first attempt at writing and I don't think it's overly good. I'm not even sure where the ePub of it is now that I think about it. Probably on the hard drive in the desk.
Ahh...while the Meditation on the Joyful Mysteries may be lost on your hard drive...it is alive and well and available on Amazon for a reasonable price...;-)
Something even more precious to me than a direct compliment for something I wrote is to have a writer I esteem thank me for a comment I left at his site. I reached up and a stronger hand reached down to make a connection. All writers, and I'm no exception, want people to 'hear' what we say, but being recognized for our response to someone else rests happy in the memory. You're doing a good thing, Yoshi, and it will feed you.
I again encourage you to keep writing! If you have something to say, you must say it. It can be a lonely thing, just sitting at your word processor, hoping you're making sense, but it's very rewarding for the sort of person for whom it's their art.
No I haven't. I should though, I wrote about what a spirit was here: https://matsumoto.substack.com/p/what-is-a-spirit-anyway , but I have not yet delved into the distinction between soul and spirit and where they overlap and diverge. You remind me that I should put that on the to-do list though. Thank you!
What happens after we die and where we were before we were born are difficult questions. For the first, we can only rely on the testimony of those who claim to have had contact with the other side, and for the second, only, perhaps, our intuition. The clear-cut death->judgement->heaven or hell picture that a lot of people seem to have is not so clearly laid out in scripture or in tradition, and I suspect that the areas where it is confusing are, as you say, probably a function of trying to speak about an existence outside of time in temporal terms.
My own thoughts on the matter are as follows:
Before we are born we have some measure of existence. I'm not sure how much, nor in what capacity, but both personal experience and The Bible seem to point to it. For example, my first daughter, when she was just learning to talk, once told me, unprompted, about how she had come from "a warm place" where she "only ate and drank soup." A place where "she could hear mommy, but couldn't see her." Now obviously children are not the most reliable witnesses, but I could not help but think at that time that she was recalling being in utero, a time of our lives when memories are not supposed to really be possible. In this case she was of course not recalling a time before her conception, but that did open the door for me that the memories other children seem to have of existence before their incarnation might be genuine.
Solomon speaks of this in The Book of Wisdom, where he asserts that "being good, I came into a good body", and the Apostles seem to likewise have some notion of such a thing when they asked Christ if the man born blind had been so afflicted because of his own sin. How could he have sinned before he was born? Well apparently the apostles at the time had some notion that you could, which points to some undefined pre-incarnate existence. Likewise Jesus, speaking of John the Baptist, states that he is Elijah come again. Is all this evidence of so called "Past-Lives"? Maybe. I am not sold but I do not close it off either. I think that there is a difference between Soul and Spirit and that perhaps the Spirit can be passed between physical forms while the Soul, the individual consciousness, is not. Elisha receiving a "portion of Elijah's spirit" for example, even though he did not have Elijah's soul. I think this solution may well bridge the gap between reincarnation (the default view of life and death in world religions) and Christianity, which does not speak of this... for the *soul*. Soul and spirit, as the author of Hebrews implies, are not the same thing, and can be divided one from the other.
Another solution is simply ancestral memories. It may be that "past-lives" are simply memories of our ancestors that we somehow tap into. In some ways that is simpler.
As for what happens after death I am a firm believer in ghosts. Indeed, I think the existence of ghosts is more or less a proven thing at this point, as they've been captured on countless photographs and other recording devices. Science asks for reproducibility, and ghosts certainly are. People see them over and over again. They just aren't reproducible *on demand*, like one would want in a laboratory setting. My wife and I have had at least one strong communication from her grandmother after her grandmother had passed. That being the case I do not think it is as simple as instant judgement into heaven or hell, but rather, Heaven and Hell appear to be a spectrum of existence that is in some way porous and allows crossing over. If a soul repents after death (somehow) and ascends out of Hell to Heaven then from his perspective Hell was simply Purgatory. I think that Heaven and Hell are somehow, I don't know... overlaid? maybe? on our physical plane of existence. This is how it is that demons can be both in hell and tormenting a man on earth at the same time. They are overlapping states of being, just as, in the presence of a saint, Heaven can be drawn down to a localized point on earth as well.
On the whole I think it is probably best not to fuss about it too much as the specifics are unknowable until we ourselves pass on. It is enough to know that this life is not all their is and that what we do here echoes in eternity. For ourselves and for others too.
I like the idea of a moot. I'm just glad we aren't Ents or we might never get past the "hellos." 😁
Indeed! Tolkien was firmly grounded in his Germanic traditions.
Ha!
Yoshi....
do you have any ideas on why it seems that atheism, and its kissing cousin agnosticism, seem to be so powerful in transmitting their worldview to successive generations?
I don’t know that any statistical study has been done, but observation and inference has led me to the conclusion that a child of nonbelievers or anti-faith parents tends to retain that perspective more so than does a child of parents of strong faith. That’s always been a conundrum to me. In particular, because the occurrence of the social pathologies which typically follow in the wake of most non-faith upbringings tend to be so prevalent. One would think that just by looking around and saying to oneself, “hey..which worldview seems to be more effective?“ would caution many to not be so hasty in abandoning the faith of their parents. But the allure of college and the materialist influence of society and social media appears to be overwhelming. Any thoughts?
And a shout out to “John“ who seems to have mistaken your relaunch of the Q&A offering for a Q+Q+Q+Q&A offering. Lol.
Hi Mike,
I think the answer to this is fairly simple. The creation myth controls the mind. Most people, even most Christians, today, do not believe in the creation narrative of the Bible. Man fashioned from dust, Adam and Eve, sinless in the Garden. The tree, the snake. The fruit and the fall. Instead nearly all children are taught in school, on television, in the movies, in society, and often even by their Christian parents and pastors, that we evolved over millions of years on a planet that is the result of a random and careless explosion untold aeons ago. I have long said that, *if* evolution is true Christianity isn't. People fight me on that but it's true. If we evolved from a proto-ape then we were not created from the dust of the ground by the hands of God. Leftism, atheism, all the things which Christians bemoan colonizing the minds of their children, are *the logical consequence* of the scientific creation myth. If everything started off as a random explosion and is the result of random, meaningless mutations, then of course all ethics and morality is just a set of social constructs open to renegotiation. And how can the sacrifice of Jesus make sense unless there was an actual, literal, original sin? How are children going to believe the stories of a book even their pastor says is actually, scientifically, incorrect on page one? They can't. In my mind evolution and all that goes with it is simply an alternative creation myth for an alternative religion, and attempts by the Church to shoe-horn Jesus into it are both misguided and frankly pathetic. Christianity isn't a random collection of beliefs but the logical consequence of the stories of Genesis. Take that away and it stops making sense. People stop believing it because they can't, even if, as you say, what they *do* believe (that life is meaningless and nothing matters) tends to make them unhappy.
Its actually even simpler than this. Atheists and many in academia are well versed in using complexity and long mathematical proofs to hide behind and fool those too lazy or inexperienced to understand the flaws present when tested against real world applications.
Trust me, Im an engineer lol.... See I just did it to you ;)
Bowahahaha! Hopefully he finds one of my Qs interesting enough to answer. I’ve always wondered what his thoughts are on all these topics!
Thank you for your thoughtful writings. My question is about how we can be certain that what we think we know/intuit on the spiritual journey is actually truth. We are really mysteries to ourselves and our ability to deceive ourselves is astounding. Emotions lead us astray, thoughts seemingly arise on their own, from who really knows where and unsurprisingly humans disagree on much. Regardless, we feel that we ought to respond to what seems like a calling even though we don’t really know what awaits on arrival.
Thank you for reading and for your compliment!
I think desiring certainty can prevent you from moving forward. To my mind, what we are to do is pursue the Highest Joy with Discernment. What I mean by that is that a lot of things might bring us a great deal of joy in the moment, shooting heroine for example, or having sex with a beautiful woman in betrayal of your wife... but which, if we think it through, would ultimately be not a small net negative. And so I think what you do is you sit down and you say, okay, how do I find the Highest Mode of Fulfillment. Of Meaning. Of Joy. Right? And then you come up with an answer and you start working towards it.
But this answer isn't going to be very good. It's like saying, "I want to walk to Montana" but all you have to go on is the Sun and the stars, so you just vaguely figure out where North is and start moving. You're not actually pointing at Montana yet, you're, in reality, going, say, decidedly North East and if you continued in a straight line you'd hit Ohio. But you have no way of knowing that until you've walked far enough where you can look around and say, "wait a minute... this doesn't look right." And then you reassess, reorient yourself, and try again. You're probably *still* not heading the right way, but you're closer to the mark than you were, and you may have to do this reorienting and reassessing many times before you find the true path.
I think it's the same in the spiritual life. We simply *can't* know, exactly, how to get where we want to go. But we start heading the direction we think is best and maintain an openness and humility to being proven wrong and changing course as we go along. It's a winding road, and it would be nicer if we could just walk a straight line, but we can't, and moving, even in not exactly the right direction, is better than staying still your whole life waiting for someone to hand deliver you a map. The map's not coming. You just gotta start.
Not a question, but a comment, one reason for the incarnation was so God would have a body to perform a human sacrifice with to bear our sins in a body on the cross to be pierced for our transgressions, Romans 3:25,, 1 Peter 3:24, and many more verses, God is definitely not the God of the philosophers and quite primal in how he does things, a converted Brazilian voodoo priestess once said, “I once worshipped false gods with the blood of goats, now I worship the true God with the blood of Jesus”
Yes, I have long suspected and have tried to communicate that the primary barrier facing Christianity today is overmuch philosophizing. You simply *don't* get that in the stories of the Bible or the stories of the saints (aside from a few). I think philosophy can be a path to a deeper relationship with God for some people, but for the majority I think it is simply an avenue to muddy the waters of the mind. The problem with thinking is that an intelligent person can convince themselves of anything, as I think modernism has shown pretty well. With enough "Reason" and "Thought" you can prove that up is down and black is white and, as Plato discovered, that a featherless chicken is in fact a human man. In fact it seems to me sometimes that the goal of a seminary degree is nothing other than to teach people to be clever enough to interpret texts in a manner 180 degrees the opposite of what they appear to be saying.
For those reasons I do not much believe in allegoricalizing the Bible, or treating its stories as metaphor. For the most part I take them at face value, and try to do the same in all areas of my life, grounding myself in the five senses and the body. If you approach it that way God, as you say, comes off as quite primal. Not unloving or dumb, but primal, a God of lions.
A paraphrase of Martin Luther - reason and logic are whores, they will serve any master. My premises I reason from - Jesus is risen from the dead - I call Jesus the grand anomaly, as I look through history and my view of reality death is king, except for the resurrection, so I am placing all my bets there. The other premise is my meeting the Spirit of God as tangible and present to me personally as part of reality, the Spirit that pointed to Jesus as the way to Him.
Can you expand your “defense against the dark arts” type posts? I think there’s a lot of practical advice in there. Can you talk about AI and where you think this is leading? Why do you think Christianity is so divided into all these sects?
Hi John, yes I need to go more into that in the future. A good overall look at how the demonic attacks people can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Exorcism-Battle-Against-Satan-Demons/dp/1645850617 , but perhaps that's not exactly what you were looking for. I will meditate on this and see if anything more comes to me.
As for A.I. I don't think it's leading anywhere good but I have that suspicion about most technology. I am something of a Luddite even though I kind of know how to code. I think the primary risk of A.I. is the further blurring in people's minds between The Screen and Real Life, and I think that's a blurring most won't have any immunity against. Already people accept mostly unquestioningly whatever comes through The Screen, when photo-realistic images and video and audio can be conjured almost instantly, I think we'll be so far down that rabbit hole that it will take a miracle to pull out of it.
The simple answer to your last question is that demons are real and actively roaming the earth. They spread division and confusion, and people are often unable to see past such things due to their own pride. In my own case, I have somewhat threaded the needle of all the various Christian sects in that I am a Catholic, but I often attend and Eastern Rite Church, meaning I worship and experience the liturgy exactly as they would in the Eastern Orthodox Church. On top of that on Wednesday nights I go hang out with the Baptists. I don't believe there is as much keeping all the sects of Christianity apart as some others do, and I hope I'm right about that.
What do you make of hypnosis or self hypnosis? How is it people tend to overcome alcohol or cigarette addictions with just a few sessions of this? Have you considered the relationship between self hypnosis scripts, affirmations and prayer?
Hypnosis is I think much misunderstood and yes I have seen the relationship between affirmations, prayer, and hypnosis. Many people, like my father-in-law for example, believe it is total bunk, but that, I think, is because they have in their minds a cartoonish version of hypnotism involving a black and white spinning wheel or being mind controlled by a man swinging a watch.
In reality hypnotism happens to us every time we watch TV, or listen to an engrossing story, or are mesmerized by a beautiful song. In such states we are quite open to suggestion and those making media are well aware of this. Propaganda works quite well in story form, precisely because the viewer is in a suggestible hypnotic state. If you just come out and say, bluntly, "the earth is dying because we pollute"... a lot of people will bristle and reject that message, regardless of whether or not it's true. If however, you sneak in climate messages in a show like The Last of Us or something, people won't notice, but they will adopt that idea as part of their worldview.
I have never tried self hypnosis, so I can't speak to it, but I have studied hypnosis a little. My entry into the field began with a lot of curiosity regarding "hypnosis recalled memories" of alleged alien abductees and also "past life regressions". Budd Hopkins did a lot of work in the former area. Unfortunately from all I can gather, hypnosis does *not* seem to recall memories in most cases, but rather to invent them. I'm not dissuaded totally from it's usefulness in such regards, but I have grown quite skeptical. As a tool for things like quitting smoking or promulgating propaganda though? It seems to have it's uses.
Can you talk about the Eucharist? It seems a bit intense to a non Christian to understand.
The Eucharist is a huge topic, as it is the central ritual of worship in the faith. I am thinking over a post that relates to it now actually but it may not be out for a while. Briefly, part of The Eucharist is the bringing together of all things and the redemption of all sins. So, in the Eucharist you have, arguably, the most heinous sin, cannibalism, being made the centerpiece of the holy life. It is part of Christ's decent into and harrowing of Hell. It is also a reversal of the eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. So, the first Eve took the fruit down and ate of it, condemning mankind, the second Eve, Mary, put the "fruit of her womb", back on the tree and we eat of it for salvation, thus transforming the tree which damned us into the Tree of Life we can once more eat from.
What do you make of Christ whipping the money changers? It is an image that is not congruent with people’s modern image of Jesus. Can you talk about perhaps why this more rigorous aspect of Christ is not often talked about in church and what are it’s ramifications or implications?
See below comment on those passages from Luke and Matthew, it was his Father’s house and as Father’s Son he had the right to clean house, the Second Coming will be a far grander display of his authority. This is not the god of the philosophers or tamed neutered varieties of Christianity and various other spiritualities. However all this violent judgment stuff is his prerogative, the historical Christian church and Christian’s has at too many times taken onto itself what belongs to God alone in this area.
You made a post about prayer that was very insightful. Can you talk about fasting? What do you think are the spiritual benefits of it and why do you think God asks us to fast?
Thank you for the compliment. I can talk about fasting but I must admit I am not very good at it haha. My strengths have always been in *doing* things, not in abstaining from them. Sloth has never been an issue, over indulgence has. For example, the only reason I am not fat is that I exercise all the time. I suffer from gluttony but you wouldn't know it to look at me.
One angle to look at fasting from is that it is a form of temptation practice. You abstain from something that isn't wrong to do (eating) to strengthen yourself against temptation so you can abstain from something that *is* wrong to do. There is also a general clarity of mind and body that comes when it is very "husked out" and emptied and I believe that abstaining from food can also be a kind of sacrifice to God when we make petitions of him.
Says in Psalms - “I humbled my soul with fasting” and in James, “God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble”
What do you make of Luke 14:26 and Matthew 10:34-36?
When I was reading the Gospels during my conversion process at one point I paused and said this about Jesus, out loud, “Who does this guy think he is!” One of the NT titles for Jesus is skandalon, a word meaning stumbling stone or snare, the root for our word scandal. The eternal authority, centrality lordship, pre-eminence, primacy of Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of God (you and I get to be a son of God, lower case) is one of the scandals of the NT. It won’t be Buddha, Mohammed, Krishna sitting up there on that throne with the Father with the Holy Spirit flowing out.
How come jesus never talked about things like “energy” but you see mention of “energy” in eastern practices and methods to harness or use this “energy”? Why do you think Christ only emphasized prayer and none of these methods?
I think the Christian model is not so much that energy needs to be cultivated or harvested but rather that barriers to such energy need to be removed. In the past the analogy has been made to a crystal covered in dirt. If we only remove the dirt, we will be reflectors, emanators, projectors, of the Divine Light and Energy without even trying. I think it's just a different model of how Divine Energy flows.
Because he was into the Holy Spirit, “Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him” Luke 3:21, also note Luke 11:13, 24:48, John 7:37-39, John 14:16-17, 26, Acts 1:8. I practice tai chi and qigong and the natural body thing they generate is not the same as the personal Holy Spirit.
What do you make of meditation practices which are so popular in the east and how come Christianity doesn’t seem to have a form of meditation?
The end point of classic Buddhist and Hindu meditation practices is to transcend, go beyond, leave behind the temporary, limited human individuality. Jesus took his body with him and is eternally Jesus of Nazareth, that’s our model, prayer is being a temple of the Holy Spirit, an individual human filled with the Spirit in the presence of God, face to face, you will receive a new name, but are forever you in a new creation. Christians are to “pray in the Spirit” I meditated eastern style for years, meditation is like being peacefully in a closet sometimes seeing things in the dark, just me, myself and I, praying in the Spirit is like being in a sunlit flowery meadow with the life and presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit actively there.
Some people relate what’s currently happening with AI with writings from Christian authors like Tolkien and CS Lewis. What are some interesting connections you have noticed from some of their works that seem to map to or March what is going on in the world today?
Meant to say “match” not March
Yoshi, simple question. I remember a few posts back, you said your goal (ideal, dream?) was to be the successor, in one way or another, of the great Christian writers of the past history (if I’m not mistaken, you mentioned Chesterton, Lewis, and Tolkien - sorry, didn’t take the time to look up the direct quote.) If that is correct, are you thinking of publishing a book, or something of the sort, that would delve more deeply into a particular topic?
Hi Bruce and thank you so much for all your support. I enjoy seeing your interactions.
I will, hopefully, soon compile a lot of my writings here into a specific theme, likely with some additional commentary which will go deeper. The working title right now is "Theology with a Spear: Christ the Eternal Om." Maybe this isn't a good title. Not sure. But Theology with a Spear, as a concept, has really resonated with a lot of people and I think encapsulates the embodied, not in your head message I'm trying to get out there. I hope it will come out soon.
I have also written some fiction, which I'm currently piecemeal publishing over at modernpulp.substack.com . It's piecemeal because this is my method of proof-reading it, a daunting task. It's otherwise finished though, two novels. I wrote another book long ago on the Joyful Mysteries but it was my first attempt at writing and I don't think it's overly good. I'm not even sure where the ePub of it is now that I think about it. Probably on the hard drive in the desk.
Ahh...while the Meditation on the Joyful Mysteries may be lost on your hard drive...it is alive and well and available on Amazon for a reasonable price...;-)
Is it??
Just checked…still there
Something even more precious to me than a direct compliment for something I wrote is to have a writer I esteem thank me for a comment I left at his site. I reached up and a stronger hand reached down to make a connection. All writers, and I'm no exception, want people to 'hear' what we say, but being recognized for our response to someone else rests happy in the memory. You're doing a good thing, Yoshi, and it will feed you.
Thank you Dan!
I again encourage you to keep writing! If you have something to say, you must say it. It can be a lonely thing, just sitting at your word processor, hoping you're making sense, but it's very rewarding for the sort of person for whom it's their art.
"But… the division of soul and spirit is a deep well. One we will have to talk about another time."
Actually Understanding the Bible Pt 5.
Abraham, The Man of Faith
Hello Yoshi. Have you written about this in any other publication? Thank you, Elisabeth
Hi Elisabeth,
No I haven't. I should though, I wrote about what a spirit was here: https://matsumoto.substack.com/p/what-is-a-spirit-anyway , but I have not yet delved into the distinction between soul and spirit and where they overlap and diverge. You remind me that I should put that on the to-do list though. Thank you!
Thank you for the compliments!
What happens after we die and where we were before we were born are difficult questions. For the first, we can only rely on the testimony of those who claim to have had contact with the other side, and for the second, only, perhaps, our intuition. The clear-cut death->judgement->heaven or hell picture that a lot of people seem to have is not so clearly laid out in scripture or in tradition, and I suspect that the areas where it is confusing are, as you say, probably a function of trying to speak about an existence outside of time in temporal terms.
My own thoughts on the matter are as follows:
Before we are born we have some measure of existence. I'm not sure how much, nor in what capacity, but both personal experience and The Bible seem to point to it. For example, my first daughter, when she was just learning to talk, once told me, unprompted, about how she had come from "a warm place" where she "only ate and drank soup." A place where "she could hear mommy, but couldn't see her." Now obviously children are not the most reliable witnesses, but I could not help but think at that time that she was recalling being in utero, a time of our lives when memories are not supposed to really be possible. In this case she was of course not recalling a time before her conception, but that did open the door for me that the memories other children seem to have of existence before their incarnation might be genuine.
Solomon speaks of this in The Book of Wisdom, where he asserts that "being good, I came into a good body", and the Apostles seem to likewise have some notion of such a thing when they asked Christ if the man born blind had been so afflicted because of his own sin. How could he have sinned before he was born? Well apparently the apostles at the time had some notion that you could, which points to some undefined pre-incarnate existence. Likewise Jesus, speaking of John the Baptist, states that he is Elijah come again. Is all this evidence of so called "Past-Lives"? Maybe. I am not sold but I do not close it off either. I think that there is a difference between Soul and Spirit and that perhaps the Spirit can be passed between physical forms while the Soul, the individual consciousness, is not. Elisha receiving a "portion of Elijah's spirit" for example, even though he did not have Elijah's soul. I think this solution may well bridge the gap between reincarnation (the default view of life and death in world religions) and Christianity, which does not speak of this... for the *soul*. Soul and spirit, as the author of Hebrews implies, are not the same thing, and can be divided one from the other.
Another solution is simply ancestral memories. It may be that "past-lives" are simply memories of our ancestors that we somehow tap into. In some ways that is simpler.
As for what happens after death I am a firm believer in ghosts. Indeed, I think the existence of ghosts is more or less a proven thing at this point, as they've been captured on countless photographs and other recording devices. Science asks for reproducibility, and ghosts certainly are. People see them over and over again. They just aren't reproducible *on demand*, like one would want in a laboratory setting. My wife and I have had at least one strong communication from her grandmother after her grandmother had passed. That being the case I do not think it is as simple as instant judgement into heaven or hell, but rather, Heaven and Hell appear to be a spectrum of existence that is in some way porous and allows crossing over. If a soul repents after death (somehow) and ascends out of Hell to Heaven then from his perspective Hell was simply Purgatory. I think that Heaven and Hell are somehow, I don't know... overlaid? maybe? on our physical plane of existence. This is how it is that demons can be both in hell and tormenting a man on earth at the same time. They are overlapping states of being, just as, in the presence of a saint, Heaven can be drawn down to a localized point on earth as well.
On the whole I think it is probably best not to fuss about it too much as the specifics are unknowable until we ourselves pass on. It is enough to know that this life is not all their is and that what we do here echoes in eternity. For ourselves and for others too.