I suggest that the translation of the Book of Mormon was Joseph Smith's alchemical Magnum Opus, or "Great Work," a transmutation of his own base desires for materialistic gold and treasure into the highest spiritual realizations of human atonement in God consciousness, and a realization or awakening of eternal life in his Self, even theosis, which he continued to preach for the rest of his life.
My wife, Raven, and I went to see the film The Greatest Showman, starring Hugh Jackman, a week ago. Say what you will about the movie/story, but we thought that the soundtrack was phenomenal, and the songs have stayed with me over the last few days. They deeply move me! What is it that moves me? The Life, the Joy, the Light. I believe these are reflections of the Divine within us all.
Until we can get back to direct primary first-hand personal intimate contemplative mystical ecstatic experience of God in the lives of each and every human being, then God will increasingly become an abstract distant concept instead of a Living immanent reality.
An addition to the BHT, my translation of Exodus 3, one of the signature chapters of the Old Testament and Torah, where Moses first encounters God in a burning bush, which I perceive was a mystical vision of God within Moses' very own mind and heart (cf. Psalm 104:4; Isaiah 33:14).
A day or two ago, you stated that consciousness arises in matter of sufficient complexity. If you know Spira, you probably know he asserts something different, which is that matter and mind and everything else rise out of and are ‘made of’ consciousness. Just wondering if you disagree with him there, and if so, why?
In the video below, non-dual spiritual teacher Rupert Spira beautifully discusses the journey from traditional exoteric outward-facing dualistic religion that worships and prays to an external God, and towards higher stages of a more integrated perceiving of non-dual at-one esoteric inward-facing union spirituality, where we realize that "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30).
The word "God" can be off-putting to many today. It seems to be laden with baggage of what many throughout history thought was God but what we have discovered is not probable. The idea of a supernatural deity, often a man with a long white beard, living out in the cosmos somewhere, is not possible to many modern minds.
Resurrection is an awakening from mortal consciousness to an infinite consciousness. But what does this mean for our physical body?
Although it may sound blasphemous to some, even most of Christianity agrees that the end goal for humanity is theosis, deification, or divinization, which means to "become God."
An addition to the BHT, an encounter between John and an angel in vision, which tells him to worship God, not any one else.