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Conceptually, at least. You’re thinking maybe of the totality of understanding?
No. I’ve been trying to make this point for years and years now but it seems that I constantly fail, so maybe I have it screwed up. I’m pretty sure worship is an experience of the whole personality rather than an understanding of the mind or intellect. If worship is self-forgetting, then what’s to understand? Yes, it’s a conscious experience, but that doesn’t mean it”s intellectually understood. The mind experience is simply consciousness of the experience, not necessarily an intellectual understanding of it. Does that make sense to you? Or am I still screwed up?
5:3.8 True worship, in the last analysis, becomes an experience realized on four cosmic levels: the intellectual, the morontial, the spiritual, and the personal — the consciousness of mind, soul, and spirit, and their unification in personality.
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Well, the quote states those four levels are realizable. Are realizable and understandable different in essence? Can’t we have cognizance of all four levels, and doesn’t that accrue to understanding, growing understanding, of the nature and potentials of the worship experience? But I won’t disagree worship may be ever more realizable/understandable as the soul grows. Makes one wonder what worship is like for post-Finaliters.
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Richard E Warren
Doesn’t realizable simply mean to make something happen in reality? I don’t think it necessarily has anything to do with understanding what that something is. Can anyone ever understand something that is supposed to make you completely forget about yourself? You’d be so totally absorbed in the experience of that something, which is completely other than yourself, that you’d forget to think about it. As soon as you think about it and try to analyze it, it will disappear. Poof, extinguished, with focus back on the self, which is not true worship. Anyway, that about sums up my experience with true worship, which I admit, has been scarce. TUB does tell us that, “Religious experience, being essentially spiritual, can never be fully understood by the material mind” (5:5.6), and I think true worship is a religious experience, no?
Doesn’t realizable simply mean to make something happen in reality? I don’t think it necessarily has anything to do with understanding what that something is.
One of the consistent definitions of realize is understand.
…register, perceive, discern, be/become aware of (the fact that), be/become conscious of (the fact that), notice; understand, grasp, take in, comprehend, see, recognize, work out, fathom (out), appreciate, ascertain, apprehend, be/become cognizant of, know, conceive;discover, find; see the light; Can anyone ever understand something that is supposed to make you completely forget about yourself?
Hmm… I can’t see why not, if we do indeed possess this four dimensional range of understanding.
You’d be so totally absorbed in the experience of that something, which is completely other than yourself, that you’d forget to think about it. As soon as you think about it and try to analyze it, it will disappear. Poof, extinguished, with focus back on the self, which is not true worship.
That oneness of being is a slippery state, and, to me, not forgettable at all. Genuine religious experiences (true worship being one type) are the building blocks of spiritual life, no?
Anyway, that about sums up my experience with true worship, which I admit, has been scarce. TUB does tell us that, “Religious experience, being essentially spiritual, can never be fully understood by the material mind” (5:5.6), and I think true worship is a religious experience, no?
Ha! Serendipity. Have to answer yes after my question above.
Worship well, if not perfectly, is my refrain. In any case, worship–remain connected!
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Richard E Warren
Rick Warren wrote:That oneness of being is a slippery state, and, to me, not forgettable at all. Genuine religious experiences (true worship being one type) are the building blocks of spiritual life, no?I didn’t say the experience was forgettable, I said the intellectual faculty that analyzes one’s experience is nonfunctional in such a situation because that would put the focus back on the self using one’s analytical machinery of the material mind. As soon as the focus goes on the self, worship becomes prayer. Worship is a soul phenomenon, and until the next life, or first circle, we don’t have access to the analytical machinery of that morontia level of mind. We can experience the morontia level of communion as a feeling, but not as an intellectual exercise in the same way the lower mind works. Worship is a superadjutant experience.Yes, genuine religious experience can be true worship but I don’t think all religious experience is true worship. Religious experience is defined as “. . .the realization of the consciousness of having found God.” (102:3.4) Religious experience has two parts, the first is discovery of the concept of God in the lower human mind. The second part is the worship phase, the actual experience of being in a relationship due to revelation by the Adjuster in the soul, the superhuman mind. The worship phase is not something that can be understood by the first part, the human mind. The worship phase is experienced as a living totality, which is what makes it a revelation. It’s an experience that goes beyond understanding, one too sublime for words capable of defining it, yet the quality and value of the relationship is known in an experiential way, as a feeling of reality.196:3.17 Personal religiousexperience consists in two phases: discovery in the human mind and revelation by the indwelling divine spirit.
16:6.8 Worship–the spiritual domain of the reality of religious experience, the personal realization of divine fellowship, the recognition of spirit values, the assurance of eternal survival, the ascent from the status of servants of God to the joy and liberty of the sons of God. This is the highest insight of the cosmic mind, the reverential and worshipful form of the cosmic discrimination.
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All right, lots of goodly insights in this discussion on pleasure. We’ve discussed worship, the highest known creature pleasure in the universe, regardless of the level(s) of awareness. So how can that manifest as an institution way down here on the evolutionary level? Terrestrial religion has a monopoly on the exercise of group worship, and maybe it should… Is the church/temple/synagogue the proper place to inaugurate the institution of self-gratification and personal pleasure the authors recommend?
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Richard E Warren
Is the church/temple/synagogue the proper place to inaugurate the institution of self-gratification and personal pleasure the authors recommend?
Where is that mentioned?
Is the church/temple/synagogue the proper place to inaugurate the institution of self-gratification and personal pleasure the authors recommend?
Where is that mentioned?
It’s not. Just wondering where the institution is to reside… Within another larger institution? Or do you envision it as a stand-alone institution?
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Richard E Warren
Just wondering where the institution is to reside… Within another larger institution? Or do you envision it as a stand-alone institution?
Isn’t the problem, that we don’t have a stand alone institution? Isn’t that why it’s percolated through all the other institutions?
I’m wondering if the video gaming industry with its virtual reality is beginning to partially fill that bill. It is entertaining, playful, game-oriented, fun, imaginative, and in some cases, socializing, such as in Pokemon Go. I’m not saying it’s the answer though. But for that matter, social media in general might qualify as an institution of self-gratification. I don’t belong to Facebook, but my friends who do are all absorbed in self-gratification on multiple levels. Maybe that’s why it’s so popular.
Just wondering where the institution is to reside… Within another larger institution? Or do you envision it as a stand-alone institution?
Isn’t the problem, that we don’t have a stand alone institution? Isn’t that why it’s percolated through all the other institutions?
Yeah, true.
I’m wondering if the video gaming industry with its virtual reality is beginning to partially fill that bill. It is entertaining, playful, game-oriented, fun, imaginative, and in some cases, socializing, such as in Pokemon Go. I’m not saying it’s the answer though.
Could be!! That’s a good idea.
But for that matter, social media in general might qualify as an institution of self-gratification. I don’t belong to Facebook, but my friends who do are all absorbed in self-gratification on multiple levels. Maybe that’s why it’s so popular.
Lump me in with those pathetic self-absorbed multiply addicted (fill in the blank_________) friends. But, mind you, social media is about the same as here, not that different, but with vastly more participants. I think it’s also a broad base for dissemination of the teachings. There you can see what 1000’s of other revelation revelers are doing dissemination-wise, and love-wise. Your vast experience and wisdom would serve well on Facebook and other platforms with so many excellent questions ever coming from new and junior readers.
FB is like any place else on Urantia, the Web, TV, the movies, temple, sports, projects, only about ten percent has much quality. And casting aspersions, stereotyping all social media users is a little, what? insulting? uh… hurtful? unkind… help me here, Bonita
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Richard E Warren
Rick Warren wrote: And casting aspersions, stereotyping all social media users is a little, what? insulting? uh… hurtful? unkind… help me here, Bonita
Here’s the one single sentence I wrote about Facebook:
I don’t belong to Facebook, but my friends who do are all absorbed in self-gratification on multiple levels. Maybe that’s why it’s so popular.
Tell me how that is stereotyping ALL social media users? Rick, you shock me, and piss me off. Tell me, what are the multiple levels of self-gratification???? Other than sheer vanity, are any of them negative? Aren’t all of them about pleasure? Did I say my friends are doing something wrong? Where do you get all the insult, hurt and unkindness? Give me a break. Not a good way to start the day. I’m so tired of having my words twisted around to mean something they don’t. Have a nice day.
Rick Warren wrote: And casting aspersions, stereotyping all social media users is a little, what? insulting? uh… hurtful? unkind… help me here, Bonita
Here’s the one single sentence I wrote about Facebook:
I don’t belong to Facebook, but my friends who do are all absorbed in self-gratification on multiple levels. Maybe that’s why it’s so popular.
Tell me how that is stereotyping ALL social media users?
Well, there is the word all.
Rick, you shock me,
Guess we both are.
and piss me off. Tell me, what are the multiple levels of self-gratification???? Other than sheer vanity, are any of them negative? Aren’t all of them about pleasure? Did I say my friends are doing something wrong? Where do you get all the insult, hurt and unkindness?
So you meant the many layered self-gratification that FB provides is mostly a good thing? I did misunderstand that.
Give me a break. Not a good way to start the day. I’m so tired of having my words twisted around to mean something they don’t. Have a nice day.
You too. Hope you feel better as it unfolds.
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Richard E Warren
Rick Warren wrote:Well, there is the word all.All my FRIENDS Rick, All my FRIENDS. NOT THE WHOLE WORLD.So this is your mistake, not mine. How about an apology for accusing me of thinking and writing hateful, hurtful, mean and awful things? I didn’t realize you had such a low and nasty opinion of me. Now at least I know.
Rick Warren wrote:Well, there is the word all.All my FRIENDS Rick, All my FRIENDS. NOT THE WHOLE WORLD.So this is your mistake, not mine. How about an apology for accusing me of thinking and writing hateful, hurtful, mean and awful things?
I said I mistook your intent, and I don’t like having bad blood between me and anyone. If an apology will restore your good humor and amity between us, you have it.
I didn’t realize you had such a low and nasty opinion of me. Now at least I know.
Not so on either account. It’s rather high.
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Richard E Warren
In Brotherhood’s sake,
Why not apply this course of action !
132:0.4 And this was his method of instruction: Never once did he attack their errors or even mention the flaws in their teachings. In each case he would select the truth in what they taught and then proceed so to embellish and illuminate this truth in their minds that in a very short time this enhancement of the truth effectively crowded out the associated error …
If we do not back-up the Brotherhood behavior who will ?
In Brotherhood’s sake, Why not apply this course of action ! 132:0.4 And this was his method of instruction: Never once did he attack their errors or even mention the flaws in their teachings. In each case he would select the truth in what they taught and then proceed so to embellish and illuminate this truth in their minds that in a very short time this enhancement of the truth effectively crowded out the associated error … If we do not back-up the Brotherhood behavior who will ?
Good point, thank you.
Back to pleasure’s institutional foundations.
A very convincing scholar and doctor spoke, on the radio, for an hour on the vast difference between the effects of the hormones serotonin and dopamine. Dopamine gives the quick high from sugar, drugs, games, name your poison. It’s the excitement hormone. Serotonin is the more enduring ‘happiness’ hormone. It must be connected with service, because the service high is one of the most gratifying, no? It’s up there with the gratifications of worship, but has little in common with the euphoria of the drug high..Richard E Warren
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