A distinction between spirituality and religion

[anthonychipoletti]

I think I also need to explain what I mean by freedom of thought

Life is not defined by words or ideas from any source or person.

Life is an infinite, intangible awareness which always existed.

Anyone is free to define their own identity and their experiences.

I cannot, and hopefully never will, try to define anyone else's life

[anthonychipoletti]

Dmartin, I understand the Facebook caution. I try to keep some privacy there but it really is impossible.

I already completely deleted the other, formerly known as twitter, because of criminally insane people.

There was at least $450 fraudulently taken from my online accounts by criminally insane people there.

I hope Elon Musk can eventually secure the new X however he has already lost $200 BILLION dollars !!

Not only from his Twitter purchase I guess anyway I understand your wanting to protect your privacy

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... 00-billion

[anthonychipoletti]

Dmartin, I think I should try to understand and explain my communication with you.

I believe you are completely sincere in your beliefs and I never doubted your sincerity.

I cannot really explain to you how frightened I am of your ideas about defining others !! [BELIEFS]

I repeat, you are free to define yourself and your experiences without my opinions

My opinions have nothing to do with you, or anyone else, I am only able to define me

Nothing that you think, say, do, pray for, or otherwise experience can ever define me !!

I have apparently been a human for about 85 years, NONE of it makes any sense to me.

The only aspect of life that makes sense to me is the spiritual love of the people I love.

That love, to me, has nothing to do with anything human or physical, it is all spiritual.

[Giulia]

Dmartin and Tony,

I apologize for not getting the time to read through this whole thread. There are a few issues that I have a problem with:

1) Quotations are supposed to help readers understand what the member who is posting is talking about or responding to. On the other hand, I find that the use of quotations in this thread occasionally makes the exchange confusing and misleading.
2) There are too many repetitive posts. This makes reading difficult and again confusing. I suggest that, if you come back to add a comment, you use your ability to edit your previous post, and create a single post out of 2, 3 or 4.

On the other hand, we all could insult each other freely without getting banned from doing that here

3) I guess that the statement I have just quoted is a joke. By no means does our Mission Statement allow members to insult each other.

Tony, you wrote to Dmartin (question marks removed to help with clarity):

However you experience understanding through the scriptures is a mystery to me

I do understand the presence of God and the person of Jesus, however to me this is spiritual.

I repeat: NOTHING IN THE HUMAN OR PHYSICAL EXPERIENCE MAKES ANY SENSE TO ME !!

Whatever truth and love we share, whatever our sharing of life with God, to me, this is spiritual.

To me, spirituality has NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING PHYSICAL OR ANY HUMAN EXPERIENCE.

I use logic and science to understand humanity and physicality, however they are still nonsense

If I may add my opinion (not judgment, but opinion, based on my personal experience) here:

1) I also find it very difficult to comment on such a complex and important topic, such as Religion and Spirituality, by means of quotations from the Scriptures of one individual religion. I can only assume that this is the sort of language that religion teaches, made of riddles, examples and dogma. I guess that whoever has not deeply researched the Scriptures is bound to have difficulties understanding a post only comprising transcripts from the Scriptures, without an explanation or comment by the writer.

2) I feel that our physical lives are at the core of our Purpose in the here and now and it is important that they do make sense while we are here on the physical plane, trying to talk and converse together. I feel we humans are an Extension of Source Energy, bringing our brains and hearts into this human experience to give Source Energy extra material to exist and the ability to co-create with us.

3) At the same time, I absolutely understand how a Near-Death Experiencer may find it extremely difficult to make sense of physical life, in view of their profound spiritual experience which no doubt opens the mind and impacts individual life much more than any human-made language, such as that of Religion.

All in all, I feel that Religion is a by-product of Spirituality and of our Real Inner Self, something invented in order to try and make sense of what might appear otherwise intangible from the here-and-now perspective. I find that a Near-Death Experience is an extremely challenging event that can impact a person's life forever, and may either turn the Experiencer into a plain religion follower or into the most open-minded version of themselves. Of course, I also understand that things are never in black and white: I feel that open-minded and inquisitive people may be found among religious, spiritual and spiritual religious people. I feel it is the open-minded and inquisitive people who really contribute to co-creating with our Source Energy, which we are all an extension of, and which (at least, as far as I know) Western Society is determined to sabotage through a whole bunch of human-made rules.

[anthonychipoletti]

Giulia, yes of course I was joking about insults, however, what I was trying to say was IF WE insulted each other ON FACEBOOK we might not get banned FROM FACEBOOK rather than my confusing statement which seems to say we are free to insult each other here, which we are obviously not allowed to do.

Also, my confusion about thinking that Dmartin was one of my old twitter friends posing as a woman has made this topic and Dmartin's topic on Kingdom of Heaven nearly impossible to understand. I had invited him here to this forum and I thought he actually had posed as Dmartin, since we often insulted each other on twitter as a joke.

[anthonychipoletti]

Giulia, here are a few comments made by twitter friend, the newest to oldest...

2/2 Only when I give up my personal perspective and realize that it doesn't matter at all whether I'm alive or another living being or smart system, does a channel open up for me to be anything or anyone else.

1/2 Death can always happen - maybe it happened yesterday and you just forgot about it. Anyway, in death there is a great challenging contradiction: the universe created me as a person, but not just me alone.

i like shocking people by saying "i'm god" - but seriously, i don't use the term god at all - i am not afraid to say there is no god - ok, there is rest of doubt - but therefore i read the Koran and respect Islam - if god then the real big mercyful sometimes angry god.


Two questions: 1) Do you think the Universe made me intentionally? 2) How do we know to have no other choice - maybe i don't know the way - or maybe i was You yesterday with your memories ? -- playing a bid Advocatus Diaboli here.

Dying isn't easy. There is a painful contradiction: The universe made us, but not us alone. Only when we realize that it doesn't matter at all whether we survive or any another system or being opens a change of perspective to be something or someone else.

[Dmartin]

Dmartin: Anthonychipoletti, thanks for understanding. Yes, there's some criminally insane people out there. It's sad so many people believe nonsense.

Dmartin, I understand the Facebook caution. I try to keep some privacy there but it really is impossible.

I already completely deleted the other, formerly known as twitter, because of criminally insane people.

There was at least $450 fraudulently taken from my online accounts by criminally insane people there.

I hope Elon Musk can eventually secure the new X however he has already lost $200 BILLION dollars !!

Not only from his Twitter purchase I guess anyway I understand your wanting to protect your privacy

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... 00-billion

[Dmartin]

Dmartin, I think I should try to understand and explain my communication with you.

I believe you are completely sincere in your beliefs and I never doubted your sincerity.

Dmartin: Yes, I am. Thank you. I will not lie. I honestly tell the truth.

I cannot really explain to you how frightened I am of your ideas about defining others !!

Dmartin: Oh, who are the others? Maybe I can take away that fright?

I repeat, you are free to define yourself and your experiences without my opinions

My opinions have nothing to do with you, or anyone else, I am only able to define me

Nothing that you think, say, do, pray for, or otherwise experience can ever define me !!

Dmartin: I don't define myself as my own anymore. That I don't belong to myself anymore. I'm Christ's own, I belong to Him. And Christ is God's own. He belongs to His Father.

I have apparently been a human for about 85 years, NONE of it makes any sense to me.

Dmartin: It's awesome you are almost 85! My Dad would have turned 86 last month. Belonging to Christ makes perfect sense. It's pure love, it's right, it's eternal life, etc.

The only aspect of life that makes sense to me is the spiritual love of the people I love.

That love, to me, has nothing to do with anything human or physical, it is all spiritual.

Dmartin: The reason why spiritual love is all spiritual is because it has belonged to Christ first and He has loved us first. It wouldn't exist without Him. Without Him we can do nothing. With Him we can do anything in spiritual love.

[anthonychipoletti]

Dmartin, The only time in my life that I believe was actually true was my NDE in 1945.

I believe that Christ in spirit was with my Uncle Neal's spirit and this is my ONLY real life.

I do agree with Giulia that our human physicality has a purpose which is to be spiritual.

[anthonychipoletti]

Dmartin, if we can, please allow our communication here in the forum to start over from now

I was thinking you were my twitter friend, Ron, and now I know you are not my twitter friend, Ron

I was trying to say that you might not understand that ANY other people are free to believe ANYTHING.

To be honest about your ideas, you seem to be saying there is only one way to believe and no other way.

This seems very frightening to me because I have had many spiritual experiences from many cultures.

Here are some of my experiences with different cultures: viewtopic.php?t=640

Also I am VERY confused about your idea of helping people understand their NDEs or other spirituality.

I think you know by now NO ONE here is going to comment or post very much because of privacy issues.

If you could say in a few simple sentences with no quotes of any kind, what you can help us understand?

Anthony Chipoletti wrote:

I cannot really explain to you how frightened I am of your ideas about defining others' [BELIEFS] !!

Dmartin wrote:

Dmartin: Oh, who are the others? Maybe I can take away that fright?