I couldn't help it

Miguel Cervantes said:

I love and depend on His perfect efficiency, understanding that all happens in His time, not mine.

In so much as chronological events are concerned and who they were about, I care not so much about the when or who as I do the Post-effect of the outcome of the lessens taught and who they apply to moving forward.

Was Eshu addressing only Simon on that matter at that point in time? or was it a lesson for us all to draw from and to be applied to the boundaries, or rather lack thereof when implementing the Great Commandment?

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Then the lesson remains for all to all...it is not what a man says he is, or will do, or imagines he is...in the Lord's presence. For all is open and laid bare before Him with whom we have to do.

Israel said:

Then the lesson remains for all to all...it is not what a man says he is, or will do, or imagines he is...in the Lord's presence. For all is open and laid bare before Him with whom we have to do.

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I'm pretty sure that was my point, in not so many words.

Some things NEVER change....

I think about you guys a lot. All of you in here. In church the other morning God moved me with Exodus 14:14. The second part of it. Be still. Be Quiet.. there are other translations.

Obviously this is my opinion of what goes on here in this forum... As far as people here go, JB had the most influence on my opinion of the crazy (I say that from a before and after perspective lol) Christians here. Logical discussions are completely lost here. The first two As present what is very logical and someone claiming to be the third A brings back everything but logic, which is all the first two want to hear. YEARS later, it's all exactly the same conversation.

Be still. Be Quiet. I feel like I almost agree with Welder that you'll believe when God helps you believe. When you're really ready, he'll give you what you need. The old timer first two As aren't going to be convinced with logic. 2 and a half years after changing my mind I still feel like the third As make absolutely no sense at all.......

That doesn't mean stop talking. It doesn't mean do nothing...It means stop trying to hard, especially with an attempt at logic.

TripleXBullies said:

Some things NEVER change....

I think about you guys a lot. All of you in here. In church the other morning God moved me with Exodus 14:14. The second part of it. Be still. Be Quiet.. there are other translations.

Obviously this is my opinion of what goes on here in this forum... As far as people here go, JB had the most influence on my opinion of the crazy (I say that from a before and after perspective lol) Christians here. Logical discussions are completely lost here. The first two As present what is very logical and someone claiming to be the third A brings back everything but logic, which is all the first two want to hear. YEARS later, it's all exactly the same conversation.

Be still. Be Quiet. I feel like I almost agree with Welder that you'll believe when God helps you believe. When you're really ready, he'll give you what you need. The old timer first two As aren't going to be convinced with logic. 2 and a half years after changing my mind I still feel like the third As make absolutely no sense at all.......

That doesn't mean stop talking. It doesn't mean do nothing...It means stop trying to hard, especially with an attempt at logic.

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How you been X?

To the part in blue: Absolutely incorrect. I could be convinced by logical argument or evidence to believe in God (not likely the Christian God because of the crazy book) and so could Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.

What do you think about freewill? Can it exist simultaneously with an omniscient God?

Good ambush, how about you?

You aren't going to be convinced with the logic that is provide-able in this case. The kind of logic you'd want to see/hear for this doesn't exist.

It's a tough question. I don't have a good answer to that, or the question that hillbilly is asking, how God supposedly created the system we are in where we need his forgiveness. I don't have it all.

TripleXBullies said:

Good ambush, how about you?

You aren't going to be convinced with the logic that is provide-able in this case. The kind of logic you'd want to see/hear for this doesn't exist.

It's a tough question. I don't have a good answer to that, or the question that hillbilly is asking, how God supposedly created the system we are in where we need his forgiveness. I don't have it all.

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I'm well, thanks. How's that new family of yours? I hope they're bringing you lots of joy.

A fairly mundane miracle would do the trick.

As long as it keeps workin' for ya (and doesn't cause you to do anything irrational).

Yes. A fairly mundane miracle. And that doesn't come from an attempt by anyone to make their faith in to a logical argument. You don't see it like I do but I've told y'all before that's what I got - a fairly mundane miracle. It was the miracle I needed.

TripleXBullies said:

Yes. A fairly mundane miracle. And that doesn't come from an attempt by anyone to make their faith in to a logical argument. You don't see it like I do but I've told y'all before that's what I got - a fairly mundane miracle. It was the miracle I needed.

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I understand the "***** in the heart". I was in a tough place recently and I experimented with my thoughts. I called upon God. I called upon many Gods and they all answered. I found comfort and strength and forgiveness. There's great utility in the belief in the power of God(s) but it's not like the utility that can be had from belief in gravity. Right tool for the right job.

When I was thinking through the illustration I gave in my 'conversion' thread last year I thought about how I am the kind of person that thinks about things in a concrete way. I put my experience in to a story using a comparison with a literal wall. I think that's what has made my faith so much of an issue over the years. It's completely anti-concrete. That's pretty difficult to deal with. Gravity on the other hand... not hard to deal with.

Not everything is concrete. Some things are mysterious and seemingly ethereal like consciousness. Though one can manipulate the physical material, where consciousness seems to originate from, either with medical procedures or chemically, one can also use the spooky properties of consciousness on itself as well.

ambush80 said:

Not everything is concrete. Some things are mysterious and seemingly ethereal like consciousness. Though one can manipulate the physical material, where consciousness seems to originate from, either with medical procedures or chemically, one can also use the spooky properties of consciousness on itself as well.

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How conscious...is conscious?

Awake...to what?

"Getting through the night" could be discovered to have more to do with what is embraced "through the day" where affections may submit themselves to some ordering in light so that even the most unwelcome of once night terrors are even understood as most precious.

Something there was in that "getting lost dream", that "being abducted dream", that "relentlessly being chased dream" that was speaking to a something.

I am going to see if I can track this down for you, if only because you have been made someone who invades my consciousness. We have been in a communication despite what appearances may seek to make of a true thing "it's just a freaking chat forum for goodness' sake!"

No, we have been drawing one another, making sketches of one another exchanged to one another for a few years now. And, giving away ourselves, even if only by letters, of one another.

It was a remarkable dream, so much so, that at the time I had the sense to share it with my daughter, so I know it's written somewhere...probably way back in a facebook message.

But the substance of it was simple. The particulars of the exact exchange. for whatever reason, don't easily come to mind.

In the dream there was the "me" that is me...in dream. But a man asked me a riddle, it was a seemingly silly one, made in a house by a staircase. Nevertheless he asked me something that on its face was plainly curious. The "I" in the dream, from the curious perspective we have in dream of perception that seems to speak of the "me" watching it, simply said, "I don't know" in response to the riddle. Then he went on to answer it "to me" in a sense that made "perfect" sense to the "me" in the dream.

Of course awakening I was kinda dumbfounded. How could I "not know" (and the riddle was very playful, almost a joke) an answer to a thing in a dream that "I" was peopling? How could this be? For I truly (for the life of me) could not see how or where the answer that came, came from.

It was not "spooky" to me at all, but quite hilariously understood, at the time. And recalling it remains so.

You probably know about the snake eating its tail and the benzene ring dream. I have seen your engagement with Sam Harris' considerations of consciousness, and listened for a bit to some of his speaking you have recommended. How that "the science" is making a thing so once obscure...a bit more plain. "Things" are bubbling up from a place where will and choice (as previously perceived and understood) have little, if any, relevance.

But this matter of consciousness is all I have ever heard Jesus Christ speak of, not as investigator or "discoverer/explorer" but as authoritative guide. "Knower" of consciousness. "Out of the heart proceeds" He says.

That he has been made into a caricature of sorts (at least to me, and perhaps to you also)..."spooky", well, I don't believe for a moment that is one of the sketches he would submit to. Indeed, I don't believe he submits to any.

Images have a great deal of power. I think we might both see that to some extent. Graven ones...and imagined ones. That may, in time, be transferred to the concrete. But regardless, they remain only ...images.

"The truth is out there"...but also, I am hilariously convinced, a lot closer than we think.

TripleXBullies said:

When I was thinking through the illustration I gave in my 'conversion' thread last year I thought about how I am the kind of person that thinks about things in a concrete way. I put my experience in to a story using a comparison with a literal wall. I think that's what has made my faith so much of an issue over the years. It's completely anti-concrete. That's pretty difficult to deal with. Gravity on the other hand... not hard to deal with.

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TXB I took a hiatus from here also a while back and missed your conversion thread completely. Went back and found it yesterday and read it. It was inspirational. Thanks for posting it. Is it too much to ask for you to kinda give a summation of your life since. If so I will understand. Mainly curious since your walk began with a small miracle, if you have continued to experience those. I have, and I'm sure there's many more that happen in my life that I just don't take the time or have the time to acknowledge.

SemperFiDawg said:

TXB I took a hiatus from here also a while back and missed your conversion thread completely. Went back and found it yesterday and read it. It was inspirational. Thanks for posting it. Is it too much to ask for you to kinda give a summation of your life since. If so I will understand. Mainly curious since your walk began with a small miracle, if you have continued to experience those. I have, and I'm sure there's many more that happen in my life that I just don't take the time or have the time to acknowledge.

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Ask and ye shall receive. It's been resurrected.