More seriously... --- In [email protected], "curtisdeltablues" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > The phrase "Jesus loves you" is totally mainstream and doesn't > raise an eyebrow anywhere. I don't suppose that people are all > referring to a mystical vision of Jesus although I'm sure some > are.
Some certainly are. Some people I have a great deal of respect for, like Bruce Cockburn, claim to have had a very personal relationship with Jesus. And who am I to say that they haven't? When it comes to this stuff, my position is that I Just Don't Know. > But the conviction that a historical person can have a > relationship with you, beyond their use as an inspirational > force, is really intriguing to me. It is taken for granted > in society as if it is the most natural thing in the world. And not just with Jesus or other spiritual figures. People think nothing of saying that they have an ongoing relationship with their dead grandmother or uncle. Within Christianity, I think a lot of this belief comes from why they like Jesus in the first place. Jesus transcended death, and retained his individ- uality while doing so. It's every ego's dream. So naturally one would *want* to believe that the egos of other loved ones in one's own family could also survive death with their individuality intact; if they can, then so can you, right? It's a very ego- stroking mythos. It's a little more difficult for me to understand in Eastern spiritual traditions, ones that tend to center on the *dissolution* of the ego or small s self or whatever you want to call it as a Good Thing. I've known monks whose whole *life* is about trying to dissolve their own egos, *and yet* they believe that their teacher, whom they consider fully enlightened, didn't transcend his own ego enough to attain formlessness when he died. They not only persist in thinking of him as if he still had individuality, some claim to be in touch with him daily in an individual form. Maybe it's all much more simple than we think. Maybe as humans we just tend to find physical forms (or even the thought of physical forms) easier to identify with and gain inspiration from than we do the formless. It's kinda tough to develop a touchy-feely relationship with the Void. So we personify the Void and have a touchy-feely relationship with that.
