Happy Halloween! For many people, however, today is not a happy day, but it is the most disliked day of the entire year. This is when people seem to celebrate the death, the macabre, evil, darkness, the shadows, wickedness, perhaps even Satan himself. Those things are a big turn off for many people, particularly the most religious and devout.
Exactly 500 years ago today, October 31, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to a church door that started the Protestant Reformation (31 October 1517). What were those "theses"? Do they have any applicability today?
Sophia von Klingnau was a nun who lived in a convent in Klingnau, Switzerland, sometime in the 13th or 14th century. Her writings were published in the Schwesterbücher (Sister Books).
Culadasa (John Yates), former neuroscientist who became a meditation master, is the author of an excellent recent book published about meditation, The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater Mindfulness.
I perceive that priesthood was originally an inner experience of Divine Power and Presence in humans, a deep Realization when they subdued their egoic psychological "natural man" self in consciousness, and perceived their real Being underneath it in Glory, beyond words. I believe humans eventually organized this mystical experience, and the knowledge of it, instituting it into the "ordination" to an "office" of "priesthood," meant to indicate those who had direct experience of God.
An addition to the BHT, about the problems with religious authorities.
An addition to the BHT, concerning how we can know for ourselves if these things are really from God, or if they are from Bryce's own deranged mind.
An addition to the BHT, about whether only one man may be a prophet, or if many people may be, at the same time.
An addition to the BHT, about exalting the false self versus humbling the false self.
President Joseph Fielding Smith, as President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles who later became the tenth President and "Prophet, Seer, and Revelator" of the LDS Church, wrote the following that was published in 1954: "IF EVOLUTION IS TRUE, THE CHURCH IS FALSE."