Mantus

tiberry, Ill discus the issue of time a little later, for now I just want to try to understand the last line in your repply.

Was that just a slip or am I missing something. If everything always was an always will be then it is obvious that there was no creation and consequently no need for motivation. The world was never created, it was always there. Hence that wonderful excerpt from Conversations with God that :::OshnSoul::: posted contradicts this view, yet you seem to agree with it. Our minds may allow us to see All There Is in the present frame and conceive of its past and future frames. Yet we were never created, we always existed, just as everything always existed.

KeyKingKong

if god is in fact benevolent, then what is good motivates god to act. i myself do not believe this though. just a thought

tiberry

Mantus - I truly admire your mastery of logic. Yet you permit the logic to prevent you from understanding. Use the force Luke...sorry, couldn't resist that...

It is exactly as you stated: There was no creation, everything was always there (here), we were never created, we always were, (and always will be).

I think you feel as though you missed something because of my analysis of the word 'motivate', and following my logic - there is no need for motivation. I believe, that was a necessary progression to disprove your perception that there was once nothing, and now something - creation, and that this creation somehow needed to be prompted by a motivation. Now that we've cleared that hurdle, and we accept that everything that is always was, is, and always will be (we do accept that, right?) we can move further. More clearly, I didn't mean to imply that god has never acted - merely not acted in the way you once thought.

Let's try this: Perception=Reality. You've heard that, right? Well guess what...its true. Probably more true than most are willing to accept - on the grandest of scales. Imagine yourself floating inside a very (infinitely) large sphere. I tell you that the exit is "up". How can you get out? Impossible, because you have no reference or perception of up or down. Now. Imagine yourself not only floating inside the sphere, you ARE the sphere, all the space inside, and outside the sphere. Pretty hard to draw a reference, huh? For that matter - how can you even be sure you exist? You are either everything, or you are nothing - but you can't PROVE either! What a predicament!! Probably pretty boring too as someone stated earlier.

You need a reference point. How can you make one? Since you are EVERYTHING; the only option is to divide yourself into parts, so that you can reference between them. You can now PERCEIVE movement, distance, time, weight, height, and an infinite number of other 'experiences'.

Keep in mind - you are only experiencing yourself, not really creating anything in the literal sense. Everything that is always was. But you can keep "pseudo-creating" just by coming up with new ways to experience yourself! How cool!!! THIS, THIS very thing is what 'motivates' god.

Your old perception: God is an individual that is constantly working to create new things, devising plans, implementing plans, causing things to happen, etc. You've already seen the flaw in this logic!!! You know this isn't right, or you'd have never asked the question!

Reality: God isn't "doing" anything except for experiencing himself. In an infinite number of ways.

Again - Experience motivates god.


O.K. Last thing. You stated that :::OshnSoul's::: post contradicts my view. Quite the contrary, read again:

This energy- this pure, unseen, unheeard, unobserved, and therefore unknown-by-anyone else energy- chose to experience Itself as the utter magnificence It was. In order to do this, It realized It would have to use a reference point within.
It reasoned, quite correctly, that any portion of Itself would necessarily have to be less that the whole, and that if It thus simply divided Itself into portions, each portion, being less than the whole, could look back on the rest of Itself and see magnificence.

And so All That Is divided Itself- becoming, in one glorious moment, that which Is, and that which is this and that which is that. For the first time, this and that existed, quite apart from each other. And still, both existed simultaneously. As did all that was neither.

Thus, three elements suddenly existed: that which is here. That which is there. And that which is neither here nor there- but which must exist for here and there to exist.
It is the nothing which olds the everything. It is the non-space which holds the space.

Where is the contradiction?

__________________
My life's work is to bridge the gap between that which is perceived by the mind and that which is quantifiable by words and numbers.

tiberry

Mantus - I just read your last post again. You said - "Our minds may allow us to see All There Is in the present frame and conceive of its past and future frames. Yet we were never created, we always existed, just as everything always existed. "

You do understand that we are a part of 'all there is', right? That there is no "real" distinction between us and god. The illusion of disunity is necessary in order to experience the PARTS of the WHOLE.

How could I have overlooked that! I'll bet nearly everyone on this board conceives of god as an individual...something or someone else, some other 'being'...

Isn't it obvious that's an illusion? A misconception? Albeit a necessary one...

__________________
My life's work is to bridge the gap between that which is perceived by the mind and that which is quantifiable by words and numbers.

Mantus

Tiberry, your patience marvels me; you would make an excellent teacher.

After re-reading the excerpt from Conversations with God again I realized that it applied to all the lessons I learned while studying simple geometry. Indeed that piece describes rather correctly that with only one point of reference there is no relativity. You need at least three points of reference to experience distance and movement and consequently time.

Therefore if you experience All There Is you would only see one point of reference. To see things from our perspective one would have to divide that point up into at least three points. Therefore the excerpt from Conversations with God is right on target in its descriptions.

There is no creation, there is no action, and both perspectives exist at the same time. Therefore motivation would be the wrong word to use, as motivation implies an action. God simply experiences both perspective at the same time. There was no time when god did not experience both perspectives (this was the presumption I first had when reading that excerpt from Conversations with God).

Very nice tiberry. I applaud your vigilance in explaining this to me. (Assuming I got it right)

tiberry

My patience as a 'teacher' is only as good as your patience in learning. (not to imply that I'm absolutely right )

__________________
My life's work is to bridge the gap between that which is perceived by the mind and that which is quantifiable by words and numbers.

tecoyah

I would have to ask, Which "god"?

Christian God"old testament"- ego and destruction
Christian God"new testament"- ego, forgiveness, and pity
Buddah- enlightenment of creation
Krishna- Toying with creation
New Age- Whatever turns her crank
Wicca- To many to list personality quirks
Allah- Peace and love(unless you piss him off)
Jehovah- ego and bitterness, playful indescision
Scientology- Nobody really knows, probably confusion
Satanism- Rigid conformity, bleakness

Mine- curiosity, enlightenment and understanding
It has no name other than"that which is"

__________________
Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

:::OshnSoul:::

You may also believe that "You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself." ?

Mantus-
There IS creation and there IS action.

What CWG focuses on our living is this: thought=creation=action.

You have a thought- you create from that another thought, which will create you to act upon that thought.

God created Life as we know it- and Us. We re-create God through experience by acting upon our thoughts.
Does that make sense?

CWG is not my "bible" or a "word of God"- no more than the actual christian bible. But every word that I have read in the series explains simply (amazingly) exactly how I have always felt deep down.