Why I'm Probably Right
I just had a conversation with someone who based his decision to become an atheist, in part, on grossly mistranslated and misrepresented quotes he was told by inimical Gentiles are found in the Talmud. They're not.
Being an atheist is certainly a better decision than being a Xian, but if one is going to go about the business of collecting accusations against the various religions of the world, one should at least vet if the accusations jibe with reality by asking the practitioners of the religion if the case is true.
He *wanted* to believe the worst about religions and gleefully gleaned what suited his purpose.
And then I heaved a sad sigh as I realized I cherish no such fondness for conspiracy theory.
I'll tell you truly. I hate conspiracy theory.
I would prefer to think that matters are the way they are because we, as a species, are just plain at the beginning of our development and are blundering badly.
I don't want to believe that MK ULTRA happened, that HAARP exists, that the Pope is a Nazi, that the Jesuits, KOMs, KOCs and the Catholic like have infiltrated every concentration of power, that our politicians are actually double agents who have been trained *not* to have the best interests of their respective nations at heart, that there are concentration camps in the US, that fluoride is placed in the water and mercury is put in vaccines and in our fillings to lower our cognitive and functioning levels...
But all the evidence points that way.
I'm probably right in my beliefs because these are not my pet preferences about how the world is or should be. I hate this shit and I hate thinking this way - but the facts on the ground leave me no recourse. Neither do I enjoy playing connect the dot.
I think that adopting a position that one does not cherish, but rather abhors, because the facts support it is a good indication that one has accepted the truth insofar as one can.
D2
Thursday, December 18, 2008
God Helps Those Who Help Themselves
Last week, upon returning from the shuq; I met a woman who told me that she is one of the Bank HaPoalim customers whose retirement pension was lost by Bank HaPoalim when they used the accounts, unbeknownst to the customers, to gamble in the bourse and lost.
She told me she went to the bank one day only to be told that her entire Retirement Pension had been lost. Evidently, there is a problem with the insurance covering the accounts. She was told, in a wholly non-committal way, that they hope that they will be able to recover some portion of her pension, offering no percentages or time frame.
She told me that she was told by the staff at the bank to take heart – that she wasn't the only person this happened to. Indeed, it's tremendous comfort and consolation to know that Bank HaPoalim had gambled away the life savings of a large number of pensioners all over the country.
She told me that she is a widow who had been putting away a few shekels every month for fifteen years. She must have been a young widow, as she doesn't look more than about sixty years old.
I asked her what she intends to do about it.
She answered: "What can I do? What can anyone do? "They" do whatever they want to do to little people like us. But don't you worry. There's a God in Heaven and He'll see to it that they get their just comeuppance!"
The singly most dangerous, disempowering, downright crippling social control mechanism that was ever introduced into religion is the delusion that there is a God "out there", "up there" who is going to come to my rescue – some day. "I believe. I believe. I believe with perfect faith in the coming of Mashiach. And even though he tarries, still I await him". So, I need not exert myself to see to it that justice is done. I am exempt from responsibility for righting the wrongs in the world.
I could not decide if I was more heartbroken or livid. I was beside myself but I knew it would not help to tell this woman the truth. I knew I had to keep my silence until such time as she has experienced enough humiliation, fear and suffering personally and witnessed that of others that God Indwelling would burst out from the core of her being and she would know that she must take action for righteousness' sake of her own free will because the fate of her creation depends upon her Awakening. Some day she will take sufficient pity on herself and on humanity and the mesmerizing, soporific tune and repetitive directive that keeps her in lethargic thrall: "I believe. I believe. I believe with perfect faith in the coming of Mashiach. And even though he tarries, still I await him" will be washed away in a flood of light of Self-realization. The fear the RaMBa"M was paid by the Sultan to inculcate in her that if she didn't believe it she wasn't a real Jew will be swept away with it, her fetters will be loosed and will break – and She will arrive and begin to save her world, bit by bit. She will know that She is the Savior, She is God, if not Almighty. There is no other.
Either we find God in the deepest interior of our own spark of indignation at injustice and fan that little spark into an inferno of realization of God Indwelling and save one another and ourselves, or no one is coming to our rescue.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Mommy, Mommy, what are the Illuminati?
Last week, upon returning from the shuq; I met a woman who told me that she is one of the Bank HaPoalim customers whose retirement pension was lost by Bank HaPoalim when they used the accounts, unbeknownst to the customers, to gamble in the bourse and lost.
She told me she went to the bank one day only to be told that her entire Retirement Pension had been lost. Evidently, there is a problem with the insurance covering the accounts. She was told, in a wholly non-committal way, that they hope that they will be able to recover some portion of her pension, offering no percentages or time frame.
She told me that she was told by the staff at the bank to take heart – that she wasn't the only person this happened to. Indeed, it's tremendous comfort and consolation to know that Bank HaPoalim had gambled away the life savings of a large number of pensioners all over the country.
She told me that she is a widow who had been putting away a few shekels every month for fifteen years. She must have been a young widow, as she doesn't look more than about sixty years old.
I asked her what she intends to do about it.
She answered: "What can I do? What can anyone do? "They" do whatever they want to do to little people like us. But don't you worry. There's a God in Heaven and He'll see to it that they get their just comeuppance!"
The singly most dangerous, disempowering, downright crippling social control mechanism that was ever introduced into religion is the delusion that there is a God "out there", "up there" who is going to come to my rescue – some day. "I believe. I believe. I believe with perfect faith in the coming of Mashiach. And even though he tarries, still I await him". So, I need not exert myself to see to it that justice is done. I am exempt from responsibility for righting the wrongs in the world.
I could not decide if I was more heartbroken or livid. I was beside myself but I knew it would not help to tell this woman the truth. I knew I had to keep my silence until such time as she has experienced enough humiliation, fear and suffering personally and witnessed that of others that God Indwelling would burst out from the core of her being and she would know that she must take action for righteousness' sake of her own free will because the fate of her creation depends upon her Awakening. Some day she will take sufficient pity on herself and on humanity and the mesmerizing, soporific tune and repetitive directive that keeps her in lethargic thrall: "I believe. I believe. I believe with perfect faith in the coming of Mashiach. And even though he tarries, still I await him" will be washed away in a flood of light of Self-realization. The fear the RaMBa"M was paid by the Sultan to inculcate in her that if she didn't believe it she wasn't a real Jew will be swept away with it, her fetters will be loosed and will break – and She will arrive and begin to save her world, bit by bit. She will know that She is the Savior, She is God, if not Almighty. There is no other.
Either we find God in the deepest interior of our own spark of indignation at injustice and fan that little spark into an inferno of realization of God Indwelling and save one another and ourselves, or no one is coming to our rescue.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Mommy, Mommy, what are the Illuminati?
Lost in Translation
Martin Luther once said the following:
"The Hebrew language is the best language of all, with the richest vocabulary... If I were younger I would want to learn this language, because no one can really understand the Scriptures without it. For although the New Testament is written in Greek, it is full of Hebraisms and Hebrew expressions. It has therefore been aptly said that the Hebrews drink from the spring, the Greeks from the stream that flows from it, and the Latins from a downstream puddle."
In this rare, remarkable and uncharacteristic moment of lucidity; Martin Luther revealed a great deal to the Christian world. Would that they have taken heed, or at least notice.
Not only was Luther being generous of spirit enough to admit that only those fluent in Hebrew, that is the Jews, could understand the depths of Torah; he was saying that the German translation of "the Bible" that he himself produced could be nothing more than a torpid cesspool, if Latin was "a downstream puddle". Most remarkable of all, it is not only inferable, but necessarily true from Martin Luther's statement, that he admitted that he did not understand the Bible that he translated into vernacular German.
Whether or not Luther was aware of the alpha-numerical properties of Hebrew, which provide the layers and lattices of meaning, as well as alternative readings of the Text that are inaccessible to all but the adept and which render Hebrew wholly untranslatable is not inferable from the passage above. If he was aware of the alpha-numerical nature of Hebrew, he preferred not to share this information with his flock.
Because it is true that the Torah is wholly untranslatable, all hermeneutics and exegesis based on a "Bible" in translation must be delusion based on initial gross, often intentional, misunderstanding. It is most likely that any translations based on translations (translations of "the Bible" from Greek or Latin) will go yet further afield and one will be led into the sphere of hallucination based on delusion. Any conclusions drawn from hermeneutics and exegesis based on the Greek translation will be without foundation, while conclusions drawn from hermeneutics and exegesis based on translations of translations cannot but be insanity.
Woe to the followers of a religion who based their thought, their emotions, their intellectual work, their "spirituality" on gross misunderstanding! How much wasted effort, indeed, how much pain could have been averted had the Christian world heeded, or at least noted, Martin Luther's admission.
Christianity was, and remains, the most sophisticated system of mind and emotions control ever devised. I believe the leaders of the various denominations in the uppermost echelons of power and influence were, and are, very much aware of what Luther knew and chose to lead the Christians into demensions [sic] of "Bible" interpretation that constituted a delusional state of mind. The emotions generated by those delusional ideas must be considered extreme emotional disturbances. Christian history and how Christians typically related to the rest of humanity bear out these sad, but ineluctable, conclusions.
It is said that the mind sciences are a recent discipline and systematic mind control a modern undertaking. I differ from that opinion. It seems to me that pagan practices were nothing but mind and emotions control, often by trauma. These are age-old practices and Christianity has seen to it that they have not been lost in the mists of time, but only hidden behind filmy veils and symbols of sufficient abstraction that they are not immediately recognizable.
Would that the Christian world had taken heed, or at least notice, of Luther's message in the passage above. It was probably the most important message he delivered to the Christian world in his lifetime.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Martin Luther once said the following:
"The Hebrew language is the best language of all, with the richest vocabulary... If I were younger I would want to learn this language, because no one can really understand the Scriptures without it. For although the New Testament is written in Greek, it is full of Hebraisms and Hebrew expressions. It has therefore been aptly said that the Hebrews drink from the spring, the Greeks from the stream that flows from it, and the Latins from a downstream puddle."
In this rare, remarkable and uncharacteristic moment of lucidity; Martin Luther revealed a great deal to the Christian world. Would that they have taken heed, or at least notice.
Not only was Luther being generous of spirit enough to admit that only those fluent in Hebrew, that is the Jews, could understand the depths of Torah; he was saying that the German translation of "the Bible" that he himself produced could be nothing more than a torpid cesspool, if Latin was "a downstream puddle". Most remarkable of all, it is not only inferable, but necessarily true from Martin Luther's statement, that he admitted that he did not understand the Bible that he translated into vernacular German.
Whether or not Luther was aware of the alpha-numerical properties of Hebrew, which provide the layers and lattices of meaning, as well as alternative readings of the Text that are inaccessible to all but the adept and which render Hebrew wholly untranslatable is not inferable from the passage above. If he was aware of the alpha-numerical nature of Hebrew, he preferred not to share this information with his flock.
Because it is true that the Torah is wholly untranslatable, all hermeneutics and exegesis based on a "Bible" in translation must be delusion based on initial gross, often intentional, misunderstanding. It is most likely that any translations based on translations (translations of "the Bible" from Greek or Latin) will go yet further afield and one will be led into the sphere of hallucination based on delusion. Any conclusions drawn from hermeneutics and exegesis based on the Greek translation will be without foundation, while conclusions drawn from hermeneutics and exegesis based on translations of translations cannot but be insanity.
Woe to the followers of a religion who based their thought, their emotions, their intellectual work, their "spirituality" on gross misunderstanding! How much wasted effort, indeed, how much pain could have been averted had the Christian world heeded, or at least noted, Martin Luther's admission.
Christianity was, and remains, the most sophisticated system of mind and emotions control ever devised. I believe the leaders of the various denominations in the uppermost echelons of power and influence were, and are, very much aware of what Luther knew and chose to lead the Christians into demensions [sic] of "Bible" interpretation that constituted a delusional state of mind. The emotions generated by those delusional ideas must be considered extreme emotional disturbances. Christian history and how Christians typically related to the rest of humanity bear out these sad, but ineluctable, conclusions.
It is said that the mind sciences are a recent discipline and systematic mind control a modern undertaking. I differ from that opinion. It seems to me that pagan practices were nothing but mind and emotions control, often by trauma. These are age-old practices and Christianity has seen to it that they have not been lost in the mists of time, but only hidden behind filmy veils and symbols of sufficient abstraction that they are not immediately recognizable.
Would that the Christian world had taken heed, or at least notice, of Luther's message in the passage above. It was probably the most important message he delivered to the Christian world in his lifetime.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Friday, December 12, 2008
The Truth About the Jews and Christ Hidden in Plain Sight
Recently, there is a huge push among Protestants, who think that if they rid Christianity of Catholicism then all will be pure and good, to pin all of the brutality of Christianity on the Catholics. That is a self-deception. Let's hope, however, that it is attributable to nascent recognition of the heinous acts committed in the name of Christ, the inner meaning of which will be explained below.
All of Christianity is a death cult.
It was Protestants, not Catholics, who carried out the witch hunts (although I'm sure the Vatican had a great deal to do with it, the Protestants were enthusiastic participations), enslaved the Blacks and devastated the Natives in North America.
Surely, you are familiar with the Chi Rho symbol.
The Greek letter rho in the symbol is another pronunciation of the name of the Egyptian sun god Ra. All languages in the Middle East are very flexible with the pronunciation of vowels, as they change with grammatical rules. One of the pronunciations of Ra was Ro, as is commonly known and acknowledged.
So, every time one ascribes divinity to christ, that person is ascribing divinity to chi RO ist. That person is saying that s/he is a ChiROist. The Chi, of course, has been integrated into Buddhism as a central teaching and we know that the occultist Catholics, like the Nazis who based themselves on the beliefs and hierarchical structure of the Jesuits, were obsessed with the Tibetans. The Nazis planned to set up an Aryan settlement in Tibet. They wanted to soak up the occult energy of Chi. It evidently compliments that of Rho.
It's hidden in plain view in the designation Christ, as is their wont to do things.
And I'll tell you what else is hidden in plain view - the identity of the true child of God who was sent to this world as a sacrificial lamb. The word Jews is hidden in the name Jesus.
The Hebrew word בני (b-n-i) can either be pronounced b'nei, meaning the sons or sons and daughters of, or it can be pronounced b'ni, meaning my son or it can be pronounced b'nai, meaning my sons or my sons and daughters.
The Hebrew Bible is not punctuated to allow for elasticity of interpretation. Thus the phrase בני ישראל (b-n-i Yisrael) can mean: the sons or the sons and daughters of Yisrael; my sons or my sons and daughters, Yisrael; or my son, Yisrael.
When the God of Yisrael says b-n-i Yisrael, God is referring to us as Its Children and also Its child in the singular.
Yisrael is the Child of God. We have no need of mythology or deification. We are the Child of God in human form and we act according to human abilities *for the sake of all humanity*.
The early Church understood the mission of the Jews in this world - that we are the Child of God sent into this world to redeem it – to be a light unto the Gentiles.
In order to hide the truth from the world, they contracted the story of an entire People, the Jewish People, in every generation, into the figure of one character - Jesus.
To make the Jews further unrecognizable as the true Child of God they then applied the supernatural attributes to Jesus that they found in pagan religions attributed to the various deities and mythological figures.
This also helped the Church attract the various heathens to Christianity - they made Jesus look familiar to the heathens they conquered by applying to him the mythology the heathens believed in.
The heathens thus acquiesced and the figure of Jesus became ever more fantastic, as he took on more and more mythological, supernatural qualities.
The identity of the true Child of God, the Jews, the People sent to redeem this world, to be a light unto the Gentiles, was thus hidden - eventually even from most of the Jews themselves.
This is the Truth (תורת) that the Church has been hiding from the world. First and foremost, we Jews must recall who and what we are and why we came into this world.
The early Church understood the mission of the Jews in this world - that we are the Child of God sent into this world to redeem it – to be a light unto the Gentiles.
In order to hide the truth from the world, they contracted the story of an entire People, the Jewish People, in every generation, into the figure of one character - Jesus.
To make the Jews further unrecognizable as the true Child of God they then applied the supernatural attributes to Jesus that they found in pagan religions attributed to the various deities and mythological figures.
This also helped the Church attract the various heathens to Christianity - they made Jesus look familiar to the heathens they conquered by applying to him the mythology the heathens believed in.
The heathens thus acquiesced and the figure of Jesus became ever more fantastic, as he took on more and more mythological, supernatural qualities.
The identity of the true Child of God, the Jews, the People sent to redeem this world, was thus hidden - eventually even from most of the Jews themselves.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Recently, there is a huge push among Protestants, who think that if they rid Christianity of Catholicism then all will be pure and good, to pin all of the brutality of Christianity on the Catholics. That is a self-deception. Let's hope, however, that it is attributable to nascent recognition of the heinous acts committed in the name of Christ, the inner meaning of which will be explained below.
All of Christianity is a death cult.
It was Protestants, not Catholics, who carried out the witch hunts (although I'm sure the Vatican had a great deal to do with it, the Protestants were enthusiastic participations), enslaved the Blacks and devastated the Natives in North America.
Surely, you are familiar with the Chi Rho symbol.
The Greek letter rho in the symbol is another pronunciation of the name of the Egyptian sun god Ra. All languages in the Middle East are very flexible with the pronunciation of vowels, as they change with grammatical rules. One of the pronunciations of Ra was Ro, as is commonly known and acknowledged.
So, every time one ascribes divinity to christ, that person is ascribing divinity to chi RO ist. That person is saying that s/he is a ChiROist. The Chi, of course, has been integrated into Buddhism as a central teaching and we know that the occultist Catholics, like the Nazis who based themselves on the beliefs and hierarchical structure of the Jesuits, were obsessed with the Tibetans. The Nazis planned to set up an Aryan settlement in Tibet. They wanted to soak up the occult energy of Chi. It evidently compliments that of Rho.
It's hidden in plain view in the designation Christ, as is their wont to do things.
And I'll tell you what else is hidden in plain view - the identity of the true child of God who was sent to this world as a sacrificial lamb. The word Jews is hidden in the name Jesus.
The Hebrew word בני (b-n-i) can either be pronounced b'nei, meaning the sons or sons and daughters of, or it can be pronounced b'ni, meaning my son or it can be pronounced b'nai, meaning my sons or my sons and daughters.
The Hebrew Bible is not punctuated to allow for elasticity of interpretation. Thus the phrase בני ישראל (b-n-i Yisrael) can mean: the sons or the sons and daughters of Yisrael; my sons or my sons and daughters, Yisrael; or my son, Yisrael.
When the God of Yisrael says b-n-i Yisrael, God is referring to us as Its Children and also Its child in the singular.
Yisrael is the Child of God. We have no need of mythology or deification. We are the Child of God in human form and we act according to human abilities *for the sake of all humanity*.
The early Church understood the mission of the Jews in this world - that we are the Child of God sent into this world to redeem it – to be a light unto the Gentiles.
In order to hide the truth from the world, they contracted the story of an entire People, the Jewish People, in every generation, into the figure of one character - Jesus.
To make the Jews further unrecognizable as the true Child of God they then applied the supernatural attributes to Jesus that they found in pagan religions attributed to the various deities and mythological figures.
This also helped the Church attract the various heathens to Christianity - they made Jesus look familiar to the heathens they conquered by applying to him the mythology the heathens believed in.
The heathens thus acquiesced and the figure of Jesus became ever more fantastic, as he took on more and more mythological, supernatural qualities.
The identity of the true Child of God, the Jews, the People sent to redeem this world, to be a light unto the Gentiles, was thus hidden - eventually even from most of the Jews themselves.
This is the Truth (תורת) that the Church has been hiding from the world. First and foremost, we Jews must recall who and what we are and why we came into this world.
The early Church understood the mission of the Jews in this world - that we are the Child of God sent into this world to redeem it – to be a light unto the Gentiles.
In order to hide the truth from the world, they contracted the story of an entire People, the Jewish People, in every generation, into the figure of one character - Jesus.
To make the Jews further unrecognizable as the true Child of God they then applied the supernatural attributes to Jesus that they found in pagan religions attributed to the various deities and mythological figures.
This also helped the Church attract the various heathens to Christianity - they made Jesus look familiar to the heathens they conquered by applying to him the mythology the heathens believed in.
The heathens thus acquiesced and the figure of Jesus became ever more fantastic, as he took on more and more mythological, supernatural qualities.
The identity of the true Child of God, the Jews, the People sent to redeem this world, was thus hidden - eventually even from most of the Jews themselves.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Immanent God
Part 1
I've been experiencing profoundly disorienting confusion. I find I don't know how to think about anything anymore.
It began with someone on the net who said: "Don't you understand? Satan won."
I thought about it and said: Let's assume that that's true. I refuse to surrender. I refuse to give in. I still stand for justice.
And then I thought: What if I imagine a state of being in which there is no more God to pray to, no perfect being, no one to extricate us, no one to save us, no one out there.
Still, said I, I refuse to surrender to injustice. It is conceivable that I am the only being in creation that still stands for justice, not because I'm commanded to, not because I'll receive a reward if I do and a punishment if I don't - but because that is what I genuinely stand for. That is my value system. That is what really matters to me. At that point I realized that weak, fallible, ephemeral as I am - that would make me God.
There is no one out there to pray to. Every prayer I have offered to God to save the world has gone unanswered. I have to redefine prayer, because I still experience the need to pray. Prayer, in this case, can only be the calling forth of strength from my own depths. I am all alone. I am my only hope. I am God, if not almighty. The experience I've had of God all my life has not come from without, but from within.
My conception of God as Omnipotent has been the conceptualization of a moral/spiritual infant.
I have been left all alone, to my own moral/spiritual devices and I will either find my own salvation within myself, or not at all. No one is coming to my, or anyone else's, rescue. There is no transcendent God. There is only Immanent God.
Part 2
I've been reflecting on this experience hard.
At the time that I wrote it I felt it was overstated, but wasn't able to express the experience correctly. I entitled this Religious Atheism, but even at the time I understood that is only a very rough approximation of what I meant. I just didn't find the words for my experience and I do not now.
It is not that there is no God Transcendent. God most certainly can, and does, exist in purely transcendent form. And It interacts with us as such *so long as we need it*.
It can be alikened to a gene that switches off when it has carried out its function and is no longer needed. It's there, but inoperative - for that particular individual, although the gene certainly exists and is operative for other individuals of the species.
When we reach the highest rung we can at the level of understanding God as Savior; It takes us to the next level - the level at which we we are no longer dependent supplicants, but rather must find and cultivate God "within".
Never have I felt so small, so feeble. Never have I felt so ill-equipped for the task. It has been decades since my heart was so obdurate, so unwilling to stir. I used to experience that when I first tried to arouse myself to prayer to God Transcendent. Now, more sluggish still; my heart won't respond when I try to summon it to compassion. Learning prayer as arousal of God Immanent will be harder, much harder than was learning to pray to God Transcendent, Who is easily aroused to mercy because It is not limited by a body. Praying to my inner core to be aroused to mercy at will is orders of magnitude more difficult. The lowest rung at this level is far higher and vastly more demanding than the highest level of understanding God as Transcendent Savior, as Rescuer.
It is precisely because I am not filled with megalomaniacal "I AM GOD!", but rather with a feeling of being so very small and weak, even more lost and cognizant of how much danger I am in that I know that this is real. I remember feeling this way decades ago when God Transcendent first revealed Itself to me. But it is harder now, much much harder.
I asked Dan if the thought that what I'm saying would be considered heretical or antithetical to Judaism. I know I went past the pale of most Jews, Judaism being infiltrated and compromised at it is today. I wanted to know if there is an understanding like this in Judaism.
Dan said: That is the original Judaism and a flood of passages and teachings that I didn't formerly understand the meanings of passed through my mind. I knew he was right.
I suppose that most people who come to this understanding would become a Buddhist or an atheist. That would certainly be the easy and comfortable path. It's always easy to join an established way of thinking and have people endorsing you and identifying with you.
But I find myself going in a direction that no organized thought system that I know of comprehends. There are certainly elements of what I'm coming to understand in other religions and in atheism, but those elements aren't satisfactorily understood and developed, at least not for me.
And so, I go it alone, again, unguided into the uncharted.
Once, when I was young, I asked: How did You become God?
It answered: This is the story of your life.
D2
Part 1
I've been experiencing profoundly disorienting confusion. I find I don't know how to think about anything anymore.
It began with someone on the net who said: "Don't you understand? Satan won."
I thought about it and said: Let's assume that that's true. I refuse to surrender. I refuse to give in. I still stand for justice.
And then I thought: What if I imagine a state of being in which there is no more God to pray to, no perfect being, no one to extricate us, no one to save us, no one out there.
Still, said I, I refuse to surrender to injustice. It is conceivable that I am the only being in creation that still stands for justice, not because I'm commanded to, not because I'll receive a reward if I do and a punishment if I don't - but because that is what I genuinely stand for. That is my value system. That is what really matters to me. At that point I realized that weak, fallible, ephemeral as I am - that would make me God.
There is no one out there to pray to. Every prayer I have offered to God to save the world has gone unanswered. I have to redefine prayer, because I still experience the need to pray. Prayer, in this case, can only be the calling forth of strength from my own depths. I am all alone. I am my only hope. I am God, if not almighty. The experience I've had of God all my life has not come from without, but from within.
My conception of God as Omnipotent has been the conceptualization of a moral/spiritual infant.
I have been left all alone, to my own moral/spiritual devices and I will either find my own salvation within myself, or not at all. No one is coming to my, or anyone else's, rescue. There is no transcendent God. There is only Immanent God.
Part 2
I've been reflecting on this experience hard.
At the time that I wrote it I felt it was overstated, but wasn't able to express the experience correctly. I entitled this Religious Atheism, but even at the time I understood that is only a very rough approximation of what I meant. I just didn't find the words for my experience and I do not now.
It is not that there is no God Transcendent. God most certainly can, and does, exist in purely transcendent form. And It interacts with us as such *so long as we need it*.
It can be alikened to a gene that switches off when it has carried out its function and is no longer needed. It's there, but inoperative - for that particular individual, although the gene certainly exists and is operative for other individuals of the species.
When we reach the highest rung we can at the level of understanding God as Savior; It takes us to the next level - the level at which we we are no longer dependent supplicants, but rather must find and cultivate God "within".
Never have I felt so small, so feeble. Never have I felt so ill-equipped for the task. It has been decades since my heart was so obdurate, so unwilling to stir. I used to experience that when I first tried to arouse myself to prayer to God Transcendent. Now, more sluggish still; my heart won't respond when I try to summon it to compassion. Learning prayer as arousal of God Immanent will be harder, much harder than was learning to pray to God Transcendent, Who is easily aroused to mercy because It is not limited by a body. Praying to my inner core to be aroused to mercy at will is orders of magnitude more difficult. The lowest rung at this level is far higher and vastly more demanding than the highest level of understanding God as Transcendent Savior, as Rescuer.
It is precisely because I am not filled with megalomaniacal "I AM GOD!", but rather with a feeling of being so very small and weak, even more lost and cognizant of how much danger I am in that I know that this is real. I remember feeling this way decades ago when God Transcendent first revealed Itself to me. But it is harder now, much much harder.
I asked Dan if the thought that what I'm saying would be considered heretical or antithetical to Judaism. I know I went past the pale of most Jews, Judaism being infiltrated and compromised at it is today. I wanted to know if there is an understanding like this in Judaism.
Dan said: That is the original Judaism and a flood of passages and teachings that I didn't formerly understand the meanings of passed through my mind. I knew he was right.
I suppose that most people who come to this understanding would become a Buddhist or an atheist. That would certainly be the easy and comfortable path. It's always easy to join an established way of thinking and have people endorsing you and identifying with you.
But I find myself going in a direction that no organized thought system that I know of comprehends. There are certainly elements of what I'm coming to understand in other religions and in atheism, but those elements aren't satisfactorily understood and developed, at least not for me.
And so, I go it alone, again, unguided into the uncharted.
Once, when I was young, I asked: How did You become God?
It answered: This is the story of your life.
D2
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