“… Lucifer was perhaps the one who best understood the divine will struggling to create a world and who carried out that will most faithfully. For, by rebelling against God, he became the active principle of a creation which opposed to God a counter-will of its own. Because God willed this, we are told in Genesis 3 that he gave man the power to will otherwise. Had he not done so, he would have created nothing but a machine, and then the incarnation and the redemption would never have come about. Nor would there have been any revelation of the Trinity, because everything would have remained One for ever.”

Jung (1942)[3]

12 hours ago, Daniel said:

The blame-game exploits a frailty in the human mind.  If there isn't someone to blame already, then, a charismatic leader can manufacture one.  This is demonization.  The charismatic leader conjures a demon, do to speak, just so they have a common enemy to rally the people behind them.

Oh no, I Get the concept. Scapegoat. The term, IMO, have a very funny back story. Allthough I think ive heard somewhere that that might be an mistranslation, and the hebrew word was refering to some sort of… spirit?

2 hours ago, Daniel said:

 

So what?  That doesn't mean we need to force others to be monotheistic.  We're Jewish Monotheists!

 

Let me make an extreme analogy?  To make a point.

 

We believe God is in charge, and God knows best.  What if God reveals itself to my neighbor as a cookie?  A talking cookie that flies and glows in the dark?  Who am I to argue?  God revealed it self to me at Sinai.  That has nothing to do with my neighbor and their divine revelation in the form of a floating glowing cookie.

 

Let's up the ante?

 

What if God reveals itself to me as a floating glowing divine cookie?  Would I be able to deny it?  Should I even try?  This is God, we're talking about.  I don't choose how, when, and to what extent God is revealing itself to me.  So I cannot exclude the possibility that God has revealed itself to others in other ways.

 

All I can tell you is:  I was born a Jew.  So God has a plan for me as a Jew.  If someone is not born Jewish, then God MUST have a different plan for them.  That's all.  Simple.

 

Besides, making an argument on principle doesn't work here.  The scripture says what it says.  There is no arguing, rationally, with words on a page.  The words on the page always win.  That's why contracts are written.  That's why laws are written.  That's why poems are written.  That's why people autograph.

 

Make sense?

 

Don't believe the hype, dude.  It sounds like someone's been feeding you false info.

 

Morning to you, If you live in Israel.
 

Ill admit to being a little bit unfair. I do agree that historically, Islam and Christianity, have been way more intolerant (towards others) then judaism, and this is because they are proseletyshing and world religion. In the case of christianity, I dont think scripture justify this, but rather abuse of it. I dont see anything wrong with folk religion, like that of both yours and mine distant ancestors. In the case of Islam, Id better keep my mouth shut as I am to unklowedgeble. It cant be all bad, but my intuition is that it is lacking in theological depth, violent and intolerant.

What I said in my last post, was not about tolerance, but rather wording. For me, it seems like the author was acknowledging the excistence of other deitites. So not monotheistic in this sense. To monotheists there is only one God, and to me it is only one as well. 
 

From what Ive discussed with others and listened to on the web (I like history and comperative religion), early, pre platonic judaism was not monotheist, but rather monoletary or something similar.

22 minutes ago, Daniel said:

For let all people walk everyone in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.

But I thought judaism was monotheist? 

59 minutes ago, Nungali said:

 

It finds it impossible to 'kneel'  .

All good jokes contains some truth 

1 minute ago, Cobie said:

That could be, idk. Not really something I’m interested in. What was this thread about again? Scrolling up … righto, Satan. Lol, that doesn’t interest me either. Time to leave this thread. 
 

 

Thats fine.

Eternity does not mean everlasting time; it means a point without time, timelessness… all of eternity can fully and completely fit into every moment of time.

‘And because eternity is timelessness, there is no conflict or tension between eternity and time—all of timeless eternity is fully present at every moment of time. That means that eternity is ever-present…

‘[Ludwig Wittgenstein says] “If we take eternity to mean, not everlasting temporal duration, but a point without time, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”

‘Exactly. And this means that eternal life is fully available to you, right now—in fact, it’s available to you at no other time except right now…

‘Falling into the timeless Now is what happens with an authentic Waking Up—which therefore does indeed include a discovery of eternal life—your eternal life…

---

‘[V]irtually all of the Paths of Liberation maintain that the Enlightened Mind is absolutely impossible to achieve or attain. The Christian mystics claim that in reality you don’t have to do a single thing to reach complete salvation—by the grace of God, you are already fully saved. Zen says that “everyday mind, just that is the Tao”—which means that the everyday state of consciousness that you have right now is indeed the Enlightened Mind, just as it is. The Prajnaparamita Sutras—the core of virtually all of Mahayana Buddhism—make one point over and over again: “If you could just realize that the Enlightened Mind is not attainable, you would be Enlightened.”

‘The Enlightened Mind is not attainable because you already have it, all of it. You can no more attain Enlightenment than you can attain your kidneys or acquire your feet…

‘You are already living fully in the present, in the timeless Now, but you probably don’t recognize this. Correlated to this lack of recognition of the timeless Now is the belief that time itself is real.

---

‘We seem not to live in the Present because we take the past and the future to be real, and thoughts about those realities keep us so absorbed and distracted that we miss the timeless Present and the Enlightened Mind. And according to the Paths of Liberation, the stream of time is no more than an illusion—it’s not really there—it’s just part of the “dream world” that we are supposed to awaken from, even though, in reality, we actually don’t have to do anything but recognize the ever-present, timeless, eternal Now that is always already the case…

‘This Now-moment doesn’t move through time; time moves through it… As Erwin Schrödinger, the cofounder of modern quantum mechanics, put it, “The present is the only thing that has no end.” …

‘Many of the Paths of Liberation therefore refer to the Enlightened Mind as “the Unborn”—it’s unborn because it never enters time; it is never born in the temporal stream. And this means that, in your direct awareness right now, your own Enlightened Mind is Unborn. You can never give birth to it because it is already fully present in its entirety and thus is indeed unattainable—just like the timeless Now.

---

‘But notice that the Paths of Liberation also call the Enlightened Mind “the Undying.” It never dies because, having never entered the stream of time (it’s Unborn), it never leaves the stream of time…

‘This means that you are not living in the narrow, passing present, which is brutally squished in between a huge past and a seemingly endless future. You are not crammed and wedged into a temporal sequence running from the past to the passing present to the future.

‘Rather, you are living in the limitless Spaciousness of an all-embracing timeless Now, through which all past, present, and future events arise within the vast openness of this boundless, borderless Presence. You are not in the entire past-present-future sequence, but it is within you. You embrace it all…

‘[V]irtually everybody who has a genuine Waking Up experience feels that they are directly and profoundly connected to an eternal, absolute, all-pervading, all-inclusive Reality, which is felt not only as a Waking Up to Reality but also as a “Coming Home,” since this is where they truly belong and always have belonged.

‘This Reality is a supreme Identity that is always already the case, timeless, ever-present, eternal…

‘Of course, while it is definitely true that you are perfectly one with the Ground of All Being just as you are, right now, you still need to recognize that fact… it takes a satori to see that you don’t need a satori.

(Ken Wilber, Finding Radical Wholeness)

It is the basis of european Notion of herioism, really. You even find it in shrek haha

Just now, Cobie said:

@NaturaNaturans  imo you are stuck in you head in Scandinavian mythology (like Jörmungandr in Norse mythology, the evil serpent that encircled the world, biting its own tail).
 

 

 

This is not scandinavian myth, it is indo european myth/mind set. Google the cattle raiding myth If interrested.

7 minutes ago, Daniel said:

@cobie,

 

Do you have anything readily available?  Dragon myths?  Something friendly?

Exactly, the dragon slaying myth is a perfect example: slay the dragon (serpent/monster) and youre a hero who will be rewarded.

3 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

In America, we call it "the blame game."  Do you have something similar in your own native language?

No

12 minutes ago, Cobie said:

@NaturaNaturans Speak for your self, I’m European and I think what you are writing here is total nonsense.

 

 

What you wrote was from a taoist perspective…

A YouTube channel (from seeker to seeker) i follow posted the following:

---

‘Eternity does not mean everlasting time; it means a point without time, timelessness… all of eternity can fully and completely fit into every moment of time.

‘And because eternity is timelessness, there is no conflict or tension between eternity and time—all of timeless eternity is fully present at every moment of time. That means that eternity is ever-present…

‘[Ludwig Wittgenstein says] “If we take eternity to mean, not everlasting temporal duration, but a point without time, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”

‘Exactly. And this means that eternal life is fully available to you, right now—in fact, it’s available to you at no other time except right now…

‘Falling into the timeless Now is what happens with an authentic Waking Up—which therefore does indeed include a discovery of eternal life—your eternal life…

---

‘[V]irtually all of the Paths of Liberation maintain that the Enlightened Mind is absolutely impossible to achieve or attain. The Christian mystics claim that in reality you don’t have to do a single thing to reach complete salvation—by the grace of God, you are already fully saved. Zen says that “everyday mind, just that is the Tao”—which means that the everyday state of consciousness that you have right now is indeed the Enlightened Mind, just as it is. The Prajnaparamita Sutras—the core of virtually all of Mahayana Buddhism—make one point over and over again: “If you could just realize that the Enlightened Mind is not attainable, you would be Enlightened.”

‘The Enlightened Mind is not attainable because you already have it, all of it. You can no more attain Enlightenment than you can attain your kidneys or acquire your feet…

‘You are already living fully in the present, in the timeless Now, but you probably don’t recognize this. Correlated to this lack of recognition of the timeless Now is the belief that time itself is real.

---

‘We seem not to live in the Present because we take the past and the future to be real, and thoughts about those realities keep us so absorbed and distracted that we miss the timeless Present and the Enlightened Mind. And according to the Paths of Liberation, the stream of time is no more than an illusion—it’s not really there—it’s just part of the “dream world” that we are supposed to awaken from, even though, in reality, we actually don’t have to do anything but recognize the ever-present, timeless, eternal Now that is always already the case…

‘This Now-moment doesn’t move through time; time moves through it… As Erwin Schrödinger, the cofounder of modern quantum mechanics, put it, “The present is the only thing that has no end.” …

‘Many of the Paths of Liberation therefore refer to the Enlightened Mind as “the Unborn”—it’s unborn because it never enters time; it is never born in the temporal stream. And this means that, in your direct awareness right now, your own Enlightened Mind is Unborn. You can never give birth to it because it is already fully present in its entirety and thus is indeed unattainable—just like the timeless Now.

---

‘But notice that the Paths of Liberation also call the Enlightened Mind “the Undying.” It never dies because, having never entered the stream of time (it’s Unborn), it never leaves the stream of time…

‘This means that you are not living in the narrow, passing present, which is brutally squished in between a huge past and a seemingly endless future. You are not crammed and wedged into a temporal sequence running from the past to the passing present to the future.

‘Rather, you are living in the limitless Spaciousness of an all-embracing timeless Now, through which all past, present, and future events arise within the vast openness of this boundless, borderless Presence. You are not in the entire past-present-future sequence, but it is within you. You embrace it all…

‘[V]irtually everybody who has a genuine Waking Up experience feels that they are directly and profoundly connected to an eternal, absolute, all-pervading, all-inclusive Reality, which is felt not only as a Waking Up to Reality but also as a “Coming Home,” since this is where they truly belong and always have belonged.

‘This Reality is a supreme Identity that is always already the case, timeless, ever-present, eternal…

‘Of course, while it is definitely true that you are perfectly one with the Ground of All Being just as you are, right now, you still need to recognize that fact… it takes a satori to see that you don’t need a satori.

(Ken Wilber, Finding Radical Wholeness)
 

Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Eternity is now.

Just now, Daniel said:

 

Serpents swim.  Serpents climb trees.  Serpents do not get dirty because of their magical skin.

 

Apply your metaphor.  What does that tell you?  

 

Please?

I dont understand. Eagles and lions and bears are majestic creatures. Serpents are the opposite. In the european mind at least.

4 hours ago, Daniel said:

Their scales shed dirt, naturally.  Their skin is beautiful.  Prized.  Snake skin boots?  You don't have them where you are?  Here you go, this is a reasonable price.  

Dirty and earthly metaphorically. Crawling along in the mud, in contrast to the noble eagle.

10 hours ago, Daniel said:

 

What are the characteristics of a serpent which distinguishes it from the others?

 

It is rising and striking.

 

What else?

 

It is earthly, dirty and cold blooded, literally.

He didnt. It is just the mode he goes into when he dont know what to say. A certain type act like that. 

4 minutes ago, Cobie said:

I have reported this, as is imo politics. 
 

 

It is. Is that not allowed? I just think ive given our Friend the benefit of the doubt a few to many times by now. 

1 hour ago, Daniel said:

They enjoy making discoveries.  And the more novel and/or scandalous the discovery the more they enjoy it.  "Hey, Jew, did you know you're practicing Zoroastrianism... hahaha"

Maybe it was a compliment

39 minutes ago, Daniel said:

However, friend, if you cannot figure out that Rape is objectively evil.  Something is clearly wrong.  Seek help.  Professional help.  Your prior enlightenment experience has scrambled your mind.  I've mentioned this before.  About Rape.  But not this strongly.  I had hoped your confusion was a phase and you'd work it out.  Professional help, dude.  If you cannot objectively label Rape as evil, that's a red flag.  A big one.  I hope this will be the last time this "objectivity problem" is raised.  OK?  I won't talk about it, if you won't talk about it.  It's a distraction.  But I feel obligated to direct you to mental health care professionals, for your own well being, as your friend, when I see something like this.

You are being dishonest again Daniel, and objectively misrepresnting me. But yes, I preger terms as «messed up,» and «disgusting and disturbing,» to evil. Like this passage:

It is a follow up. And an important one. Open for interpertation, I think. One thing to keep in mind is that there wasnt a Christian cannon before, well, the Christian cannon was constructed. Curiously, the beggining seems to have a lot more diversity and myth, like «the god of this world,» and a higher God. 

I am curious If satan, the adventsstund, has a Prometheus, Mitra, Lucifer theme going on? Rebelion?

Also @Daniel, your interpertation of Job would both be interresting and serve as a start for discussion

15 minutes ago, Maddie said:

 

I already stated those about the Christian version, the Jewish version, and the scholarly understanding of where the concept came from earlier in the post. 

Sooo zoroastrianism -> dualism -> God vs. devil? How do you account for the role of devas and asuras being flipped in zoroastrian and indic belief?

4 minutes ago, Maddie said:

 

if the question had been "what is evil" then that would be a bit more encompassing. 

Sure maddie, but id like to hear Your thoughts, please.

Just now, Maddie said:

 

No, "Satan" is the name of a very specific being in various (mostly) Abrahamic literature. 

Who is an evil spirit. The king of evil spirits, even. The advisary of God, or good. My argument has been that «satan» is a lable we put on much we dont like. He is barley mentioned in the bible, so a lot of the lore around him is non-biblical, folk belief. If you disagree, thats fine, but id like it If you flesh it Out more. Looking forward to Daniels take from a jewish perspective as well.