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.
anthonychipoletti wrote: ↑Sun Oct 22, 2023 1:46 am
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.