Did we live before our mortal lives? Was there a premortality? Do we bring God's children into the world? Yes, but not literally.
Tag: Adam & Eve
Why Love Another? What for? Mysticism Doesn’t Just Tell Us—It Shows Us!
What is Love? How do we know it? How are we One in it? The mystical experience shows us directly not only what Love is, but that we are Love.
A Bodily Resurrection of Jesus? or of Christ? A Mystical View
Did Jesus come back from the dead, or should we look deeper for the truth of resurrection?
What is the “true” church?
Is there "one true church," and if so, who or what is it?
A Psychological and Mystical Interpretation of the Myth of Adam & Eve and the Garden of Eden
I think the story of Adam & Eve is a mythological allegory describing humanity's "fall" of consciousness into the dualities of self-awareness, subject/object relationships, and the opposites of existence. This is symbolized in the partaking of the "tree" of knowledge of good and evil, i.e. dualities.
Falling in Love with the Earth is Knowing God and our Self: A Commentary on Thich Nhat Hanh and Climate Change
This past week I was saddened to see the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that paints a grim picture of the current status of climate change and the future projection of this century. This report was commissioned during the 2015 Paris summit on climate change. It's a wake up call to the [...]
The "Hidden Treasure" of God in Mormonism and Buddhism
In my paper "The Book of Mormon as Literary Alchemy: Joseph’s Magnum Opus and the Philosopher’s Stone," I suggested that the "gold plates" that Joseph Smith had in his possession were not actually made of gold, and did not actually contain ancient historical records like Mormons traditionally think. But that doesn't mean that there were not "gold plates" which were a kind of "hidden treasure" that Joseph really did discover within himself, which was the source of real divine wisdom, "ancient wisdom," and which he taught could be found within all people as well.
Four Types or Stages of Resurrection
It seems to me that there are at least four types of resurrection, or at least four stages of the process of being resurrected, or events that could be considered resurrection.
We are Already God, We've Just Forgotten
Many mystical paths in the world's spiritual traditions claim to lead one to a conscious merging, union, and a direct identification with Deity, the Sacred, Reality, the Universe, the Transcendent, with a first-hand experience of being God.
Our Ideas of God Are Not God
The ideas we have about God are not God. Any idea, thought, or concept never was and never will be God. They may be helpful symbols that point to God, metaphors, analogies, allegories, images, but they are not God as God is. They will inevitably conflict with one another and be fallible, as every symbol eventually fails at actually being the thing it is supposed to represent. The symbol is never the thing-in-itself.