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Post by Big Lin on Mar 15, 2015 20:15:19 GMT
at The idea that 'we reap what we sow' is falsified on a daily basis where the good suffer and evil people prospers. And I don't believe in reincarnation either and even if I did I don't believe a God of love could possibly force us to go through all that again and again completely unnecessarily. It is NOT 'we' who are limiting ourselves; a paraplegic can NEVER do the same things as an able-bodied person no matter how much they may want to. It is circumstances beyond our control that are responsible for most of our limits. And frankly the whole idea of some nebulous 'future life' where we won't be 'limited' is just not only ridiculous to me but to be honest downright immoral. God is a God of love, you are right in your statement!!! If you believe in Soul, where is it, and what is it doing right this minute? We know the body returns to the earth and rots, so that is not going to enter Heaven. Circumstances are not beyond our control, that is what I am trying to explain. There are so many different beliefs, surely they can't all be the truth. I wonder which belief IS the truth, is it only yours? If that is what you think? How presumptious of you to assume that. It is just what you have chosen to believe, and isn't necessarily so. God is a God of love or He is nothing. Where is soul? Soul is within each one of us at every second of our life. When we die our soul goes into a kind of ether. But the Bible tells us that we will be resurrected bodily as well as with our souls. Circumstances ARE beyond your control. You CAN'T 'choose' to be born as a millionaire or a cripple. As for different beliefs, frankly the problem isn't so much WHAT anyone believes as the fanaticism with which they try to impose their beliefs on other people. I don't claim my beliefs are the truth; I'm well aware of faith and opinion and so on. But you always give me the impression you think Eckanckar have got the absolute truth and you constantly say you 'know' things that actually you DON'T know but only believe. Just like me.
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Post by Scottish Lassie on Mar 16, 2015 2:43:39 GMT
God is a God of love, you are right in your statement!!! If you believe in Soul, where is it, and what is it doing right this minute? We know the body returns to the earth and rots, so that is not going to enter Heaven. Circumstances are not beyond our control, that is what I am trying to explain. There are so many different beliefs, surely they can't all be the truth. I wonder which belief IS the truth, is it only yours? If that is what you think? How presumptious of you to assume that. It is just what you have chosen to believe, and isn't necessarily so. God is a God of love or He is nothing. Where is soul? Soul is within each one of us at every second of our life. When we die our soul goes into a kind of ether. But the Bible tells us that we will be resurrected bodily as well as with our souls. Circumstances ARE beyond your control. You CAN'T 'choose' to be born as a millionaire or a cripple. As for different beliefs, frankly the problem isn't so much WHAT anyone believes as the fanaticism with which they try to impose their beliefs on other people. I don't claim my beliefs are the truth; I'm well aware of faith and opinion and so on. But you always give me the impression you think Eckanckar have got the absolute truth and you constantly say you 'know' things that actually you DON'T know but only believe. Just like me. Hi Big Lin, So what is knowing? Please elucidate if you wouldn't mind. My personal experiences are my reality, what else could they be? Therefore I KNOW that they are true. I am communing with an intelligence whom I believe to be the Holy Spirit (ECK) the Voice of God. Consequently I am being given knowledge that I wouldn't have under ordinary circumstances. The aim of all ECKists is to reach the stage of enlightenment that results in 'KNOWING'. Occasionally through the grace of God we experience the reality of knowing that what we have experienced, is indeed the truth. All members of ECKANKAR experience this, as we are all being given spiritual enlightenment. What more can I say? You are entitled to believe whatever you want to believe. I will do the same. We both love God, so let's be happy about that truth.
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Post by Scottish Lassie on Mar 16, 2015 3:20:45 GMT
Hi Big Lin, reincarnation to me is similar to resurrection, and we are told: except ye be born of the spirit, ye shall not enter the Kindom of Heaven and that to me means rebirth, which is exactly what happens when Soul (spirit) is reborn in the body of an infant.
I am not trying to force ECKANKAR down anyone's throat but when I reply to anyone's post I am giving my viewpoint through the understanding of the knowledge that I have gained as an ECKist.
If people are convinced of what they believe then whatever I say should not have any adverse effect. I personally like to read the different viewpoints, and surely you must know that the are coloured by what we believe to be true.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2015 15:19:12 GMT
I think that to a certain degree we can control our destiny. There will always be things we cannot control, this is the challenge of living.
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Post by mikemarshall on Mar 18, 2015 20:42:17 GMT
God is a God of love or He is nothing. Where is soul? Soul is within each one of us at every second of our life. When we die our soul goes into a kind of ether. But the Bible tells us that we will be resurrected bodily as well as with our souls. Circumstances ARE beyond your control. You CAN'T 'choose' to be born as a millionaire or a cripple. As for different beliefs, frankly the problem isn't so much WHAT anyone believes as the fanaticism with which they try to impose their beliefs on other people. I don't claim my beliefs are the truth; I'm well aware of faith and opinion and so on. But you always give me the impression you think Eckanckar have got the absolute truth and you constantly say you 'know' things that actually you DON'T know but only believe. Just like me. Hi Big Lin, So what is knowing? Please elucidate if you wouldn't mind. My personal experiences are my reality, what else could they be? Therefore I KNOW that they are true. I am communing with an intelligence whom I believe to be the Holy Spirit (ECK) the Voice of God. Consequently I am being given knowledge that I wouldn't have under ordinary circumstances. The aim of all ECKists is to reach the stage of enlightenment that results in 'KNOWING'. Occasionally through the grace of God we experience the reality of knowing that what we have experienced, is indeed the truth. All members of ECKANKAR experience this, as we are all being given spiritual enlightenment. What more can I say? You are entitled to believe whatever you want to believe. I will do the same. We both love God, so let's be happy about that truth. What constitutes knowledge? That is a subject that thinkers of both East and Wes have debated for thousands of years. In essence there are five principal claims about the nature of knowledge. One is the operations of mathematics in which 2 + 5 = 7 and that type is essentially akin to playing a game. It is analogous, for example, to playing chess where only pawns or knights may move at the beginning of the game. Mathematical knowledge is knowledge of the rules required to operate within a closed system. A related area is mensuration where we know that water boils at 212 Fahrenheit and 100 Celsius. We know that the moon is a particular distance from the earth as a result of our measurements. Again, this is knowledge of the rules within a closed system and it would apply whether metric or imperial measurements are used. The third area of knowledge is much more open to question.. It is personal experience and as we all know while the majority of our knowledge may indeed derive from experience it is not a sufficient condition to make a 'knowledge claim' valid. Most experience is sensory experience - sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. None are truly capable of giving us certain knowledge although touch is the sense that misleads us least. The extent to which our senses deceive us into mistaken perception has long been recognised. Colour blindness, mirages, seeing double when drunk, hallucinations under the influence of drugs, the delusions of mental patients are simply the most obvious examples of visual illusions that make the sense of sight only a partial gateway to knowledge. We can also have auditory hallucinations and even illusions of smell, taste and touch so our sensory experience is not a sufficient basis on which to claim knowledge. The fourth type of knowledge is not even derived from direct experience. For example, no one is alive on earth today who experienced the Norman Conquest or even the French Revolution. We have the testimony of those who were contemporary with these events but we have essentially to believe or disbelieve them and cannot honestly say that we know what happened. The fifth type of knowledge claim concerns inner experience. I have dreams and nightmares but I do not regard my dream experiences as constituting knowledge. Mystical experience is always personal and subjective. As such any statement about that type of event remains simply a statement about certain inner experiences that befell a particular individual and the question is why should those who have not experienced the identical event believe them or at least accept their interpretation of their inner experiences? The problem is that with human knowledge there is infinitely less that we do know than we do not. It does the perennial quest for knowledge no favours to persist in making claims for knowledge and certainty on the basis of opinion and purely subjective experiences that remain forever inaccessible to the rest of us.
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Post by Scottish Lassie on Mar 19, 2015 10:18:34 GMT
Hi Big Lin, So what is knowing? Please elucidate if you wouldn't mind. My personal experiences are my reality, what else could they be? Therefore I KNOW that they are true. I am communing with an intelligence whom I believe to be the Holy Spirit (ECK) the Voice of God. Consequently I am being given knowledge that I wouldn't have under ordinary circumstances. The aim of all ECKists is to reach the stage of enlightenment that results in 'KNOWING'. Occasionally through the grace of God we experience the reality of knowing that what we have experienced, is indeed the truth. All members of ECKANKAR experience this, as we are all being given spiritual enlightenment. What more can I say? You are entitled to believe whatever you want to believe. I will do the same. We both love God, so let's be happy about that truth. What constitutes knowledge? That is a subject that thinkers of both East and Wes have debated for thousands of years. In essence there are five principal claims about the nature of knowledge. One is the operations of mathematics in which 2 + 5 = 7 and that type is essentially akin to playing a game. It is analogous, for example, to playing chess where only pawns or knights may move at the beginning of the game. Mathematical knowledge is knowledge of the rules required to operate within a closed system. A related area is mensuration where we know that water boils at 212 Fahrenheit and 100 Celsius. We know that the moon is a particular distance from the earth as a result of our measurements. Again, this is knowledge of the rules within a closed system and it would apply whether metric or imperial measurements are used. The third area of knowledge is much more open to question.. It is personal experience and as we all know while the majority of our knowledge may indeed derive from experience it is not a sufficient condition to make a 'knowledge claim' valid. Most experience is sensory experience - sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. None are truly capable of giving us certain knowledge although touch is the sense that misleads us least. The extent to which our senses deceive us into mistaken perception has long been recognised. Colour blindness, mirages, seeing double when drunk, hallucinations under the influence of drugs, the delusions of mental patients are simply the most obvious examples of visual illusions that make the sense of sight only a partial gateway to knowledge. We can also have auditory hallucinations and even illusions of smell, taste and touch so our sensory experience is not a sufficient basis on which to claim knowledge. The fourth type of knowledge is not even derived from direct experience. For example, no one is alive on earth today who experienced the Norman Conquest or even the French Revolution. We have the testimony of those who were contemporary with these events but we have essentially to believe or disbelieve them and cannot honestly say that we know what happened. The fifth type of knowledge claim concerns inner experience. I have dreams and nightmares but I do not regard my dream experiences as constituting knowledge. Mystical experience is always personal and subjective. As such any statement about that type of event remains simply a statement about certain inner experiences that befell a particular individual and the question is why should those who have not experienced the identical event believe them or at least accept their interpretation of their inner experiences? The problem is that with human knowledge there is infinitely less that we do know than we do not. It does the perennial quest for knowledge no favours to persist in making claims for knowledge and certainty on the basis of opinion and purely subjective experiences that remain forever inaccessible to the rest of us. Hi MikeMarshall, The normal things that we all know and take for granted, I believe as you do, but that is as far as it goes. Why are you so sure that a delusion is not real, who says? Every experience that a person has, is real to the person, and is not to be thought of as a hallucination or as a mirage. Our body senses things apart from the ordinary things of life. Why does it say in the Bible that Spirit will always strive with the physical, to me, that indicates that there is something else in life apart from what we consider normal. As I believe in reincarnation some of us may well have been part of the Norman Conquest and the French Revolution and many more similar events. The book Proof of Heaven proves that. The part of the brain that is supposed to be responsible for hallucinations was inactive because of a severe bacterial infection and this man was aware of having an experience that he should not have had. How can you explain it? There are other dimensions besides the physical dimension, I believe that!!! It is up to you what you choose to believe, it won't make one whit of a difference in regard to what I believe. I believe that Soul can leave the body whenever it wishes and have experiences in the different dimensions that exist. I have visited them just as the Neurosurgeon did when he was ill.
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Post by kronks on Mar 23, 2015 1:52:40 GMT
Hi Big Lin, So what is knowing? Please elucidate if you wouldn't mind. My personal experiences are my reality, what else could they be? Therefore I KNOW that they are true. I am communing with an intelligence whom I believe to be the Holy Spirit (ECK) the Voice of God. Consequently I am being given knowledge that I wouldn't have under ordinary circumstances. The aim of all ECKists is to reach the stage of enlightenment that results in 'KNOWING'. Occasionally through the grace of God we experience the reality of knowing that what we have experienced, is indeed the truth. All members of ECKANKAR experience this, as we are all being given spiritual enlightenment. What more can I say? You are entitled to believe whatever you want to believe. I will do the same. We both love God, so let's be happy about that truth. What constitutes knowledge? That is a subject that thinkers of both East and Wes have debated for thousands of years. In essence there are five principal claims about the nature of knowledge. One is the operations of mathematics in which 2 + 5 = 7 and that type is essentially akin to playing a game. It is analogous, for example, to playing chess where only pawns or knights may move at the beginning of the game. Mathematical knowledge is knowledge of the rules required to operate within a closed system. A related area is mensuration where we know that water boils at 212 Fahrenheit and 100 Celsius. We know that the moon is a particular distance from the earth as a result of our measurements. Again, this is knowledge of the rules within a closed system and it would apply whether metric or imperial measurements are used. The third area of knowledge is much more open to question.. It is personal experience and as we all know while the majority of our knowledge may indeed derive from experience it is not a sufficient condition to make a 'knowledge claim' valid. Most experience is sensory experience - sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. None are truly capable of giving us certain knowledge although touch is the sense that misleads us least. The extent to which our senses deceive us into mistaken perception has long been recognised. Colour blindness, mirages, seeing double when drunk, hallucinations under the influence of drugs, the delusions of mental patients are simply the most obvious examples of visual illusions that make the sense of sight only a partial gateway to knowledge. We can also have auditory hallucinations and even illusions of smell, taste and touch so our sensory experience is not a sufficient basis on which to claim knowledge. The fourth type of knowledge is not even derived from direct experience. For example, no one is alive on earth today who experienced the Norman Conquest or even the French Revolution. We have the testimony of those who were contemporary with these events but we have essentially to believe or disbelieve them and cannot honestly say that we know what happened. The fifth type of knowledge claim concerns inner experience. I have dreams and nightmares but I do not regard my dream experiences as constituting knowledge. Mystical experience is always personal and subjective. As such any statement about that type of event remains simply a statement about certain inner experiences that befell a particular individual and the question is why should those who have not experienced the identical event believe them or at least accept their interpretation of their inner experiences? The problem is that with human knowledge there is infinitely less that we do know than we do not. It does the perennial quest for knowledge no favours to persist in making claims for knowledge and certainty on the basis of opinion and purely subjective experiences that remain forever inaccessible to the rest of us. Just a technical point water only boils at 100C at one atmosphere. The boiling point depends on the pressure as can be see from this diagram is you can understand it lol. Anyway, so all I am saying is that thing are not necessarily as they seem, water will boil below 100C indeed appears it will boil below 0C if the pressure is enough. So what may seem impossible may well be possible when looked at in a different way.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2015 15:25:16 GMT
So what may seem impossible may well be possible when looked at in a different way.
Good point, this is the reason for discovery.
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Post by Deleted on May 5, 2015 21:04:39 GMT
Control our destiny?
No!
First you have to believe that we (individuals) have a destiny, I don't.
You can prepare yourself for a future you want to happen, but that want may have nothing to do with the reality of what happens.
You can prepare yourself (within the context of your capability) to be ready to accept whatever the future may be. You might be right, you might be wrong, you might be 'somewhat' right (or wrong), but you control nothing.
The most you might be able to do is to understand that the future is unknowable and that your function is to respond to whatever happens, so that you can survive. But then you may not be successful.
One man may have prepared to be the best sword fighter in the world and then be shot with a hand gun.
or. . . . . Was that destiny or just the odds of the circumstance?
A person may have committed to preparing for the accepting the commands of a religion and then find that the religion was completely a myth. Again destiny of just happenstance?
Or . . . . . . . . . an Atheist may have rejected all ideas of a God and then finds after death he was wrong.
Destiny, not at all.
Believing in the existence of destiny and that we can control it to any degree is merely and example of self-deception.
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♫anna♫
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Post by ♫anna♫ on May 6, 2015 2:09:11 GMT
[/quote]"Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug" -- Mary Chapin Carpenter[/quote]
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Post by kronks on May 12, 2015 4:13:55 GMT
We can only control our destiny in a limited sense, some things are certain ie taxes, and one other lol.
I have never one for trying to control my destiny much.
I basically just take each day as it comes, there is so much uncertainty in life
I am not sure there is a great point in long term plans.
I think this song has similar sentiments!
Apparently Doris Day was 91 last week according to someone's comment on the video!
Wikipedia seems to disagree and says she was born on the April 3rd, but the 91 is correct.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 23, 2019 13:51:48 GMT
I think we can control our destiny to a limited degree. There are many things out of our control.
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Post by Scottish Lassie on Oct 25, 2019 10:29:39 GMT
I think we can control our destiny to a limited degree. There are many things out of our control. We are indeed creating what happens to us, by the very fact that whatever our input into this world, it is reciprocated in like kind.This is known as cause and effect. The Universe has been designed to correspond to every move that a human being makes, it can't be fooled. This is what Karma is. It is the perfect law. A person reaps what he/she sows.
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Post by Scottish Lassie on Nov 16, 2019 0:10:47 GMT
Hi Emerald, in what way do to think that it is limited? Our choices are limited in lots of ways. If we are poor we can't spend as much money even on necessities let alone things that aren't. If we're a paraplegic we can't act physically in the same way as able-bodied people do. If we have mental illness we can't think or act in the same way as normal people. If we're put into extreme situations we tend to react differently from how we would in more stable ones. And so on and so on. The idea of absolute free choice is just not viable. Believe it or not, we are the ones that bring that limitation into our lives by previous choices and behaviour. It is known as karma.
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Post by Scottish Lassie on Nov 16, 2019 0:24:03 GMT
Hi Big Lin, I think we have freedom of choice within the bounderies of God,'s Law that was instigated at the moment of Creation. As I am a member of ECKANKAR and therefore believe in reincarnation, past lives and Soul travel, it stands to reason that we reap what we sow (Karma) We do have freedom of choice but it is limited by what we chose to put into action in previous lives. So it is we who are limiting ourselves. Once we know this,we can curtail our actions to the extent that we are not so limited in a future life. Many people don't realise this, so consequently reach a stage where life can be unbearable. at The idea that 'we reap what we sow' is falsified on a daily basis where the good suffer and evil people prospers. And I don't believe in reincarnation either and even if I did I don't believe a God of love could possibly force us to go through all that again and again completely unnecessarily. It is NOT 'we' who are limiting ourselves; a paraplegic can NEVER do the same things as an able-bodied person no matter how much they may want to. It is circumstances beyond our control that are responsible for most of our limits. And frankly the whole idea of some nebulous 'future life' where we won't be 'limited' is just not only ridiculous to me but to be honest downright immoral. The Universe was created to respond to everything that we put into effect by our intention and behaviour. We are the ones that make the decisions on how we run our lives, so we are actually creating our future.
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Post by Hunny on Apr 22, 2023 20:48:39 GMT
at The idea that 'we reap what we sow' is falsified on a daily basis where the good suffer and evil people prospers. And I don't believe in reincarnation either and even if I did I don't believe a God of love could possibly force us to go through all that again and again completely unnecessarily. It is NOT 'we' who are limiting ourselves; a paraplegic can NEVER do the same things as an able-bodied person no matter how much they may want to. It is circumstances beyond our control that are responsible for most of our limits. And frankly the whole idea of some nebulous 'future life' where we won't be 'limited' is just not only ridiculous to me but to be honest downright immoral. The Universe was created to respond to everything that we put into effect by our intention and behaviour. We are the ones that make the decisions on how we run our lives, so we are actually creating our future. I could agree with you each. The universe DOES respond to our intentions. But it is also true that a child with insufficient clothing and food, who gets beaten and no upbringing...is not going to intend their way to never having been severely limited and crippled by it. ..Would you please come back and tell us of Eckankar, Scottish Lassie? I live near that.
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Post by Hunny on Apr 22, 2023 21:16:47 GMT
Hi Emerald, in what way do to think that it is limited? Our choices are limited in lots of ways. If we are poor we can't spend as much money even on necessities let alone things that aren't. If we're a paraplegic we can't act physically in the same way as able-bodied people do. If we have mental illness we can't think or act in the same way as normal people. If we're put into extreme situations we tend to react differently from how we would in more stable ones. And so on and so on. The idea of absolute free choice is just not viable. I agree. I am the sum of the conditioning of my experiences. And I did not chose those experiences. (Who would?) (Forgive me old friend, for posting on such an old thread, but..I've taken an interest in Philosophy of late. You see, at this late hour, I've met this most wonderful Professor and.. well I shall write you - all - to catch you up. I do hope you and Mike are well.
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Post by jenny on Jul 30, 2023 1:31:00 GMT
Yes, but in a limited sense was my vote
We can choose to quit our job b/c we don't want to or have the energy to get out of bed, because the job has caused stress & began to wear us down. This can feel peaceful, even temporarily stress relieving.
3 days later ur scrambling to get a new job but taking longer than u think. Had u kept ur job- you'd have that nice vacation 6 months later but now ur too broke.
In the blink of an eye you have controlled your destiny.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 18, 2023 16:30:45 GMT
Can we control our destiny? In Part? Completely? Not at All?
Are the things that happen to us tests? random events? drawn to us by our state of consciousness? Yes, but only the things you have direct control over.
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