Well, that's not entirely true. I can appreciate a lot of what you are saying, but you have fundamental failures to properly reference the Ground of Being in the proper manner.
However, I do like the poem. It's sweet. But I probably don't take it as literally as you do. Ah well, that's why poems are nice.
Which is why Person B is wrong. Since you don't (can't) completely reject the contingent, you need to actually incorporate the correct contingencies. I agree you can always have some relation to the Absolute, so the Ground of Being can potentially be immanent through every possible approach (i.e. every individual being). But Person B is incorrect in stating that you can always have the Quran and the Sunnah, whether you have it through the specific and contingent, or not.tinythinker wrote:I am not a Muslim, so that isn't a concern for me.
As I wrote to Fleetmouse, I do not reject the contingent, I simply don't confuse a limited view of a single configuration of it with the sum character of the absolute
Yeah you do; you're own. You can't escape that. You do reject many paths and favour others. That's your prerogative, obviously, but it's still an ego-based activity. We all have to filter reality in that way. That IS your expression of revelation. You characterize it as "direct awareness/the presence of the divine" but you always have to mediate it with contingent reality. A finite experience of the Absolute is not direct awareness, it is representative ego even if it gives you a profound sense of peace and purpose.Revelation for me comes and through all things, but sime things are more accessible and transparent for some people than others. I don't reject the historical, but neither do I priviledge any expression of revelation as more authentic or useful than direct awarenessy/the presence of the divine.
Remember, you said, "I simply don't confuse a limited view of a single configuration of it with the sum character of the absolute". So you can't claim that revelation comes to you "through all things", since you don't and can't appreciate ALL things. Those things that you do appreciate give you revelation are reflections of your ego; particularly obvious where you take revelation contrary to what is prescribed by the traditional interpretation. I don't require that you have to limit yourself to what I say Islam is offering about the Divine, you can take your own view on it. 1) that is no longer Islam 2) that's only possible because of your privilege. It's all just tools and you have your own privileged set. If you claim something other than that, you are contradicting yourself in the most fundamental of ways.
Yeah, you are. You have your own prized intellectual and spiritual treasures. You can't not have them. You may not characterize them in that manner, but ducks go "quack" despite being called kittens.If certain religious beliefs and practices lead someone to this, that's great, but they are tools. They like anything else can fuse with and illuminate our presence or they can obscure it. If some idea of rightness or correctness or superiority of ideas are what some folks prize in terms of religion and spirituality (and I don't presume whether ot not this applies to you) then let them have their intellectual or spiritualized treasures. I'm just not interested in that approach.
The thing about absolute truth claims is that the one rejecting the claim is also making an absolute truth claim. You are claiming that you know better than me that the path of God-consciousness can be done by your own methods instead of Islam. That's an absolute truth claim. It's complete exclusionary of my absolute truth claim and declares knowledge of the Absolute that I don't have access to. Ego demands an exclusionary perspective; you can't escape it. Until you actually become Buddha, you're just a guy with an ego and that ego attaches itself to your desires just as I attach mine to desires to follow the Will of ALLAH. We're just ordinary people; some more magnanimous than others. Then we die.
You aren't the waves, or the ocean, you're in a boat with no doors or windows. There is only sounds and motion. This boat I'm in is called the Ship of Salvation. If you were to tell me to get out of the boat and that I will still have the boat, or else I'm not in a boat - it just doesn't fit with my reality. So you have your ego, I have mine. Nice boat. I think mine's better, care to come in for a bit? If you don't think yours is any better, what's the harm in trying? It's another tool you haven't tried yet.
What is that expression you just gave me, other than your own special revelation? If you want to just do your own thing, I'm not going to beat you over the head to make you do otherwise. But you're just a guy with ego attachment issues same as me. Attach your ego to the Will of ALLAH. You aren't going to do any better than that. And then you will die. I'm not claiming Islam is going to submerge you in the ground of Being, but it will do some nice things for you and give you some peace in your life. What's the harm in trying? Your boat or my boat? Forget the ocean, that's just your ego attachment fooling you (or so Person B would say).For me what is right or correct or superior is whatever helps an individual to go beyond a purely egoic nature and into God-awareness, i.e. the absolute, the eternal present, the ground of being, etc. If some folks need the authority of special revelation to move in that direction, so be it.
All folks need the authority of special revelation. You just give yours your own name. Mine is called the Will of ALLAH. And maybe it really is. Why couldn't the Absolute descend guidance upon us? It can't be much worse than wrestling with your own ego by yourself, can it? If you just want God-consciousness, that's the entire aim of Islam. How do you know it won't work better for you? You say that you know the Absolute has the remarkable characteristic of the Ground of Being. Yeah, I know that too. I experience that too. Your privileged perspective can't possibly give you MORE of an inroad to God-consciousness. But if God really exists, how do you know He didn't privilege one path over another? It would make things a heckuva lot easier, and in a sense that sort of pragmatism is precisely what you are espousing.
You simply dismiss other views. You can't have both your views and other contradictory views and claim that you haven't dismissed one of them. The very nature of the views that are contrary to what you espouse is that they have to be acted upon, not just intellectually acknowledged as existing. The acceptance or rejection comes through the enactment of desire.As an example, the approach to Christology I suggested illuminates various views of Jesus rather than simply dismissing them.
Then they aren't orthodox Christian teachings any longer, I'm afraid. They are your teachings. My father would not accept your views of Jesus. If you don't have a special privileged position over him and his path to God-consciousness, then you should just let him be the Christian and you can stick to being tinythinker. I'm not going to beat you with a stick to make you do otherwise, but a duck is a duck because it goes "quack", not "meow".Various orthodox Christian teachings can be appreciated in the light of a dynamic and living spirituality as opposed to reducing interpretations of these teachings to fixed objects to be possessed and fought over.
That sounds nice, but you can't express a self-consistent worldview by reference to the Ground of Being in such a manner. That's why I'm not reflecting back what you are trying to convey; you aren't being consistent with what you are trying to express about the Absolute.And while it is not a criticism, reading about eliminating specific history and psychology or transcending our humanity to become something tells me that what is being reflected back is not what I am trying to convey. Another way to say it: the contingent/historical is to the divine/eternal as waves are to water. You don't need to eliminate the wave to experience the water, nor does a wave need to transcend itself to "become" water.
Back to Person A and Person B.
...A: "I though you said I had nothing."
person B: "No, you said it. It's what you really believe. I merely exposed that belief."
person A: "I always believed in the reality of what I necessarily have and of what can be taken from me"
person B: "But what can be taken from you is to water as the wave; they are modes of being in the Ground of Being"
person A: "Then you go ahead and try to reproduce the Quran and the Sunnah; the Divine is not the same nature as the contingent, nor can the contingent become the same nature as the Divine, there is nothing that can be called part of the Divine"
The reason why I side with Mr. A is because Mr. B doesn't have a consistent means of expressing valid statements about reality. Mr. A is actually capable of explicitly reference the nature of his ego in relation to his revelation. Both acquire God-consciousness. But unlike Mr. A, Mr. B hasn't figured out how the Ground of Being fixes the meaning of his reality in relation to that Ground, not that he can approach the Ground by what meaning he desires.
-sgtt