I suggest that Joseph Smith's earliest direct encounters with God happened in mystical experience, or what is also known as altered states of consciousness.
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Meeting Richard Rohr
What a gift it was to meet Fr. Richard Rohr today at the 2019 The Universal Christ conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico with my friends Michael Potter and Jory Pryor. My towering over Richard Rohr is just an optical illusion. He really towers over me.
The many "Christs" and "Messiahs" that preceded Jesus
And, what many may not know, there were many "Christs" who came prior to Jesus, and who were not Jesus, nor do I think they were prefiguring or foreshadowing Jesus. They were the "Christs" in their own right, who came in their own time, who developed what it meant to be a "Christ" or "Messiah" in ancient Israel long before the word was ever applied to Jesus. I think it may be helpful to become acquainted with these "Christs/Messiahs" to better understand who Jesus was.
Updated Topical Guide on ThyMindOMan.com
I just finished updating the Topical Guide on the site here. This is a quick way to look up articles I've written on specific topics related to mysticism, spirituality, religion, science, philosophy, life, and reality. I have manually curated this list, which includes nearly every post except the BHT. I hope this helps you as you navigate the website.
Thoughts about "From Naïveté to Wisdom," the Pattern of the Spiritual Journey
I want to say a few thoughts about Richard Rohr's daily meditation today about "From Naïveté to Wisdom." Please click the link to read it. It's a beautiful simplified perspective of the faith journey: from order, to disorder, and then reorder.
A Mystical Interpretation of the Messiah Rebuilding the Temple, or Christ Coming to the Temple
A prominent belief in Jewish tradition is that the coming Messiah will "rebuild the temple." Jesus too said he would "rebuild the temple." But what temple?
A Mystical Perspective on the Problem of Evil
A friend asked me what my take was on the problem of evil, or theodicy, so I thought I'd write about it here.
The Two Deaths in Mystical Christianity
I think that Christianity may have conflated Jesus's mystical experience of an ego death, perhaps at the time of his baptism when the "heavens opened," in which his individual psychological self "died" and he was was "reborn" of Spirit, or "raised up" (resurrected) to his identity in Christ consciousness (a consciousness of nondual union in God/Reality), with his biological death on the cross. These two deaths seem to have been conflated at some point, resulting in a supernatural conception of the resurrection.
David Bentley Hart on "How Can We Know God?"
David Bentley Hart (b. 1965) is described as "an American polymath whose work encompasses a wide range of subjects and genres. A prolific essayist, he has written on topics as diverse as art, literature, religion, philosophy, film, baseball, and politics. He is also a writer of fiction." Religiously speaking, he is a "convert from high-church Anglicanism [...]
Qualia, Consciousness, Christ, and Cosmos
What is qualia? What is the source of individual instances of subjective conscious experience, like seeing the redness of an apple? Where does the redness come from? I don't know, but here are some ideas. Energy in our environment impinges upon our sense organs causing a cascade of electrochemical reactions and nerve impulses that are [...]