To Molly - What you said makes a great deal of sense to me. Are you familiar with The Ethics
written by the philosopher Spinoza. You sound like his karmic twin. -----Original Message----- From: Molly Brogan <[email protected]> To: "Minds Eye" <[email protected]> Sent: Thu, Sep 10, 2009 3:22 pm Subject: [Mind's Eye] Re: Do sudden prayers make God jump? "a God who is omnipotent and omniscient and who is involved in an individual personal relationship with all human beings" I totally agree with this, Francis, but not with anything you say afterward. Why? Because I do not see god as separate from myself, or myself separate from my experience. Therefore, someone or thing outside of myself is not effecting my experience completely external to me. I do understand that most folks understand God as objective, external to self and able to effect experience in ways that are separate from self. This is not what I believe. I believe that God is an aspect of myself that is: as Vam says, the ineffable, undifferentiated, and as Pat says, all possibility, and as Justin has said, the uncreated (and created.) and as you say, omnipotent, omniscient and directly involved in a personal relationship with my individual self and all human beings, and, at this point, I am one with all life. The dynamic between my God and my individual self manifests my experience according to my viewpoint (beliefs.) One aspect of myself cannot be separated from the other, God, Christ (all humanity), me, my experience ... it all plays out in concert...manfests through me into my experience. At the point that I and my experience are one, my experience is non dual. Therefore, to me, prayer may just be "the language of God" or the Logos, as it moves between you and I. It connects, it moves, it manifests experience. To ask if God changes his plan, to me, is to ask if I have changed my relationship with God so as to effect a manifest change in my experience. God doesn't change, all possibility is all possibility, all inclusive Through prayer, I change my viewpoint, or my relationship to God, and my experience changes because new possibility comes into it as a result of the change in me. On Sep 10, 1:25?pm, frantheman <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm taking the liberty of starting a new thread on this one, taking up > a theme which cropped up in the "Homage to Neil" thread as a res ult of > a half throw-away comment I made about my extreme skepticism about the > efficacy of prayer. > > First, definitions:http://freedictionary.org/?Query=prayer&button=Search > > For an initial working model I'll take the following Webster [1913] > definition, "The act of addressing supplication to a divinity, > especially to the true God; the offering of adoration, confession, > supplication, and thanksgiving to the Supreme Being." > > There are a number of aspects here which are - for believers - > relatively unproblematic; adoration, confession and thanksgiving. Even > from the point of view of a non-believer, I can accept the idea of > positive psychological feedback from such action, a kind of inner > positive loop which need not be dependent on the actual existence of > the deity being prayed to. The issue I want to address here is that of > prayer as supplication; asking God for something, requesting God to > influence specific outcomes of specific processes. > > The major Abrahamic monotheistic systems all posit a God who is > omnipotent and omniscient and who is involved in an individual > personal relationship with all human beings (or, at least, those who > profess belief and commitment to him/her). To me, the idea that this > God would concretely intervene to change the course of events as a > result of a particular request by a believer seems to be riddled with > contradictions. Does God change his divine plan as a result of the > prayer? If, following the conventional religious models, God loves the > believer and directs things for his/her ultimate good, will he/she not > do this regardless of whether the believer prays or not? > > And, while you're thinlking about this, a little musical > contribution :-) > > ?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He4NFXIKQkk > > Francis --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/minds-eye?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
