terry

you are an apologist for unwarranted, repulsive and inappropriate hate speech... islamophobes are painting one of the worlds greatest religions black... I refuse to defend islam as it stands on its own, but I can't stand by and participate in dialog involving hate speech without calling it out... the usual thing is to take a lot of awful biblical quotations out of mothballs and point out how violent the ancients were...that doubles the offense... this sort of islamophobia green lights horrible discrimination and people are dying due to this sort of ignorance receiving currency as though it weren't beyond the pale in any legitimate discussion of religion... it got trump elected... it will get us all killed, not just the ones marginalized and dehumanized...like the jews in the last century, they are scapegoats and lightning rods for western self hatred...unlike the jews, there are 1.7 billion muslims and more every day... soon hundreds of millions of poor bangladeshis will try to escape the effects of climate change through migration and hatred will become a tsunami...westerners will encourage india to take a hardline...nuke them... they're not human, not like us; they're muslims... if pakistan or syria were in europe or christian, they would get some assistance...

still thinking about the causes of islamophobia... In freudian,, western psychoanalytic terms it amounts to penis envy...powerless, inadequate, frightened, insecure and needing someone to blame desperately because being oneself is so hard... strawberry fields forever! and keep your cotton picking hands off of my patch... there is a blindness to the righteous karma of reverse colonialism, and the need to replace all these old haoles anyway with vigorous new blood... rumi gives us the image of an effeminate eunuch who owns a beautiful slave girl...he can sell her to buy kohl and rouge and perfumes, in order to pursue his own pleasures, but he cannot use her in the natural way, only pass her on to someone suficiently virile... of course, there's no such thing as being a little bit castrated...

Old argument, goes back at least to zeno. Zeno had an orchard, and caught a thief stealing his apples, and proceeded to beat him.The thief protested that if all things were god's will, then he should not been punished for stealing fruit. Zeno replied, if all things were god's will, the thief shouldn't complain of being beaten for his theft.

one love (bob marley) One love, one heart Let's get together and feel all right Hear the children crying (One love) Hear the children crying (One heart) Sayin', "Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right." Sayin', "Let's get together and feel all right." Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa Let them all pass all their dirty remarks (One love) There is one question I'd really love to ask (One heart) Is there a place for the hopeless sinner Who has hurt all mankind just to save his own? Believe me One love, one heart Let's get together and feel all right As it was in the beginning (One love) So shall it be in the end (One heart) Alright, "Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right." "Let's get together and feel all right." One more thing Let's get together to fight this Holy Armageddon (One love) So when the Man comes there will be no, no doom (One song) Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner There ain't no hiding place from the Father of Creation Sayin', "One love, one heart Let's get together and feel all right." I'm pleading to mankind (One love) Oh, Lord (One heart) Whoa. Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right. Let's get together and feel all right. Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right. Let's get together and feel all right.

Of course, I knew you would say this. When moses went out into the desert and opened his heart, he saw god in a burning bush. To the materialist, there was no god, just a cresoste fire. Moses made up the whole thing to retrospectively justify his acts. I can't even mention jesus whose acts are nonsensical and whose personality is a joke. Muhammed pointedly never claimed to do any miracles or be personally divine, exactly the contrary (quran 18:110): Say [O Prophet]: "I am but a mortal man like all of you. It has been revealed unto me that your God is the One and Only God. Hence, whoever looks forward [with hope and awe] to meeting his Sustainer [on Judgment Day], let him do righteous deeds, and let him not ascribe unto anyone or anything a share in the worship due to his Sustainer!" It is god who justified mohammed. The inner meaning, the ta'wil, is that there is no muhammed, no terry, no bindi, just god. We are "alone with the alone." (corbin) There is no god but god. The jihad, the holy war, is against one's own nafs, one's own soul or ego or personality or putative liver of life. The fundamental delusion is that there is a world out there and a person in here. The inner meaning of the quran - that is, of god's word - reveals that there is no world out there and no person in here. Your god is one god. Omar khayyam: Alike for those who for To-day prepare, And those that after some To-morrow stare, A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries "Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There.” Again, I am giving you credit here for being a rational being with a heart and mind that may be reached by truth. Of course, that is giving you way too much credit, so let us try to understand whence comes your racist, xenophobic hatred for all that is good in the world, ie islam. Submission to god. The tendency, honestly, is to oppose hatred with hatred. What a bad person you are to deny god and disrespect god's lovers and friends. But... Coming from a medical background, we tend to set aside the moral dimension of evil and treat it as an illness. And you, friend bindi, are not the only person suffering from this illness. People who feel stuck in a life they hate and are unwilling to take personal responsibility for lifting themselves higher turn to jealousy, envy and hatred to compensate for their inadequacy. Because of this, the average westerner facing a failing and spiritually deadening and unrewarding culture of capitalist growth in a rapidly warming, overpopulated world which won't tolerate it, turns to simple minded hate of change and nostalgia for 'returning to normal' or repeating an idyllic nonexistent past. These modern westerners have a totally bankrupt religion and when they look within they see only a chilling emptiness of artificial intelligence and mechanical existence. Unwilling to admit that what is socially acceptable in their culture is utterly unsustainable and bad for them and the planet, unwilling to accept the necessity for change stemming from an imploding way of living, they cast about for someone to vent their negative emotions on in a way that will be accepted by those they slavishly imitate and submit to, their influencers. They are easy prey for people who will stoke any hatred to achieve power. Seeing friends and neighbors succumb to hatred they gleefully give in to base instincts, and deny that anyone has any true religion. They may even become footsoldiers in the culture wars, helping to stoke hatred until one day they find themselves hacking off their neighbors arms and legs with machetes by the millions. You islamophobes are jealous and envious of people who don't have to hate themselves for being devils. Poor, non-white, religious, subsistence farmers are your real muslims. Your average pious wealthy muslim feels a solidarity with these basic peasant human muslims that you cannot even imagine. The average muslim meets a westerner and wants to talk about religion and is astonished to find that the average so-called christian knows little of their own scriptures and rarely prays. Muslims have a rich deep spiritual life that westerners hate because it exposes their own hypocrisy and pretenses and inner poverty. The west is destroying the planet in their greed, and the people who want to deny that find islamophobia a handy diversion and route to power. The global war on islam was entirely a power grab by the neocons, an ongoing coup that has destroyed democracy in america and indeed the world and is bringing us tyrants all over the globe. A dylan says, In ceremonies of the horseman, Even the pawn must hold a grudge. So, my friend, try thinking for yourself and not being such a tool. And that's not even talking about inner meanings, even the outer meanings are wrong and you should change. Recognize racism, bigotry and hatred and stop supporting them. For your own sake if not ours. terry

When my rich businessman son went on the haj a few years ago, the last little desert jumper into mecca had him sitting next to a woman who had never seen a seat belt before. They did not have a common language, and showing her with his belt didn't work, so he finally buckled it for her. And they smiled.

Now I see how, on a forum dedicated to mysticism, there is no sufi section. Even though sufis are the most numerous, influential and commonly known mystics in world history as well as currently. Who would have expected such xenophobia and racism from those interested in enlightenment and mystic love? I'm reminded of my college days at oregon straight in corn valley. Most of those country boys had never seen a black or a muslim and literally did not know how to act or what to say. They would just stare and my friends would feel as though in a goldfish bowl or zoo cage. Get to playing poker and drinking beer and we're all buddies in no time. If you guys sat down in any normal situation with any ordinary muslim your judgmental attitudes would melt away like summer frost. If you worked in the trenches for awhile with people of different color or caste you would soon recognize your common humanity. Without this sense of true brotherhood, which is in essence to recognize the common fatherhood of god, you know nothing of mysticism and resemble the hindoos feeling the elephant.

No sufi who actually becomes a mystic leaves islam. This should be obvious. Sufis are not hated by muslims. Hatred and anger are not condoned by islam. (sigh)

"host organism" I kind of like it. Beats being a consumer.

It does not seem far-fetched at all in america, where abortion is criminalized by flaming fundamentalist catholic supreme court judges even for ten year old incest rape victims. Of course they are total hypocrites, see football moron herschel walker's well funded senate campaign in georgia. America's supreme court allows churches to ignore public health restrictions and will legitimize homophobia soon in the name of religion, rolling back more rights. It is illegal for children in florida public schools to say the word gay or speak of gay parents siblings or relatives. Books are being banned for telling the historical truth and I would not be surprised to see books literally burned. Including qurans, no doubt, if they can find any.

No, nunchuks, it is the anti-islqmic hate speech that has no place in any public forum and is especially reprehensible here. I agree it is a major turn off to new members.

Reminds me of trump talking about mexican immigrants as rapists and murderetrs, "Some, I suppose, are good people." Mighty white of ya, trump.

Waste of time quoting the quran to me. The text is fifteen humdred years old. Muhammed was a desert raider who murdered, stole and raped for a living. Similar to a modern capitalist. One time as related in the quran muhammed was fighting a battle with men of inferior religion. On the point of defeat, he asked a respite to pray, and his proud foe granted it. Muhammed bent down, picked up a handful of dirt, and threw it in the eyes of his enemy, renewed the battle, and prevailed. Afterward he felt bad about it, and god told him, "Ye did not throw when ye threw." God took the responsibility on himself, and absolved muhammed. So He recited in the quran 8:17 And you did not kill them, but it was Allah who killed them. And you threw not, [O Muhammad], when you threw, but it was Allah who threw that He might test the believers with a good test. Indeed, Allah is Hearing and Knowing. This text is often repeated by sufis because it epitomizes the inner meaning of the quran, the batin as opposed to the zahir which is the exoteric meaning. As in xtianity, there are fanatical evil people who take the literal meaning of the law (sharia) and insist on it being the only meaning. Such people are a minority but being evil they hunger for power; it is proverbial that the devil loves to quote scripture. Muhammed made it clear that the quran should be read on deeper levels. The hadith says there are seven meanings for each verse, but the saints say there are infinite meanings and that the believer should understand each verse anew every time it is read. You, bindi, have been tested and have failed. You love the fruit and hate the tree, or love the tree and hate the fruit. You are a warrior for hate and division. I could explain the esoteric meaning of every verse but you would understand me exactly as much as a spoon understands the taste of soup. I'm giving you credit here for having the potential to hear the truth and cop to it. Perhaps you are a saul on your way to mecca and becoming an islamic paul. Try reading the lovng and spiritual verses and cleansing your heart. It is not you throwing stones at god, the compassionate, the merciful, but god herself. I meditate twice a day and nearly always recite this surah: 113. Surah Al-Falaq (The Daybreak) In the name of God, the Gracious, the Merciful. 1. Say, “I take refuge with the Lord of Daybreak. 2. From the evil of what He created. 3. And from the evil of the darkness as it gathers. 4. And from the evil of those who practice sorcery. 5. And from the evil of an envious when he envies.”

the opening words of the Poemandres, the first text of the Corpus Hermeticum: Upon a time while my mind was meditating on the things that are, my thought was raised to a great height, while the physical senses of my body were held back—just as are the senses of men who are heavy with sleep after a large meal, or from fatigue of body. I thought I heard a Being more than vast—in size beyond all bounds—called out my name and say: "What wouldst thou hear and see, and what hast thou in mind to learn and know?" And I said: "Who art thou?" He answered: "I am Shepherd of Men, Mind of all-Masterhood; I know what thou desirest and I am with thee everywhere." And I replied: "I long to learn the things that are, and comprehend their nature, and know God. This (I said) is what I desire to hear." He answered me: "Hold in thy mind all thou wouldst know, and I will teach thee." And with these words His aspect changed; and straightway, in the twinkling of an eye, all things were opened to me. And I saw a limitless Vision: all things turned into Light—sweet, joyous Light. And I became transported as I gazed.... (Poemandres, v.1-4)

The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus – (Mystery of the Ether & Gnosis of All) trans sir isaac newton 1. Tis true without error, certain & most true. 2. That which is below is like that which is above & that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing. 3. And as all things have been & arose from one by the mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation. 4. The Sun is its father, the moon its mother, the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth is its nurse. 5. The father of all perfection in the whole world is here. 6. Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth. 7. Separate thou the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross sweetly with great industry. 8. It ascends from the earth to the heaven & again it descends to the earth & receives the force of things superior & inferior. 9. By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world 10. & thereby all obscurity shall fly from you. 11. Its force is above all force. For it vanquishes every subtle thing & penetrates every solid thing. 12. So was the world created. 13. From this are & do come admirable adaptations whereof the means (or process) is here in this. Hence I am called Hermes Trismegist, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world. 14. That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished & ended.

Sufis are not all entirely spiritual and admirable, some are even terrorists, as in chechnya, and the moscow theater takeoverand hostage murders involved sufis. Sufi organizations are subject to decay and loss of focus. Whatever has form changes. Names are labels that conceal as much as they reveal. Sufis are choosy and exclusive, islam is not. Many of muhammed's first followers were poor, weak and servants and slaves. Sufis tend to choose fit young men of "character." Not so ,much a school for boys as zen but still. Associating islam with terrorism is pure propaganda. Amerika will strike a wedding party with a hellfire missile and kill dozens to kill one "terrorist" (journalist or preacher most likely). American military doctrine said that if a building was occupied by 46 innocents and one militant, 47 people were going to die. In the iraq "war," 200,000 iraqis were killed and 147 americans. Afghanistan turned the taliban from condemning ooppy production to maintaining it. Stable regimes in libya and iraq were destabilized permanently and the "islamic state" resulted. Israel is a corrupt rightist apartheid society whose obvious racism is tolerated by the west even though they have no oil because the victim is islam. The chinese murder and rape uighurs in concentration camps on a mass scale. Many millions of muslims are victims of climate change resulting from godless materialism, that is, capitalism. It is always convenient to blame the victim, it helps maintain the status quo. Latter day crusades. What saves them is faith, and numbers. May god bless and keep all lovers of god.

Think for a second how many ordinary muslims are casting off their hijabs in protest in iran and how few morality police actually doing the terrorizing. In the name of god, the merciful, the compassionate.

I truly believe islam needs no defense, and that her detractors are simply ignorant bigots. Yes there are many millions of muslims and a relative handful of sufis. On the other hand, probably most mystics by sheer quantity are sufis, and most mysticism is sufi inspired, from buddhist to hindu to christian. And sufis are muslims at root, or they aren't sufis. The two worst abusers of religion on the planet are the saudi princes and the ayatollahs. Imagine if evangelical christians ran western countries. Truth is westerners are estranged from religion and less vulnerable to clerics. Anyone who knows muslims knows that they are not only good people, their societies are more attuned to god and goodness generally than ours, despite much greater challenges. Christianity is morally and spiritually bankrupt, and islam lives largely in the hearts of hundreds of millions of muslims. There is no merit in this sort of discussion. Disappointing that people can abide countenancing such corrupt opinions. Shameful, really. You must never have actually met an ordinary muslim before, and yet still have really shitty ideas about them. Media conditioning I guess, and western or eastern arrogance and racism. I'd offer more sublimities from the treasure trove of islam but you'd probably gnash them between your hooves.

meister eckhart: "As I was coming here today I considered how to preach to you clearly so that you would understand me properly, and I hit upon an analogy. If you can understand it, you will be able to grasp my meaning and get to the bottom of all that I have ever preached about. The analogy is with my eye and wood. When my eye is open it is an eye: when it is shut it is the same eye; and the wood is neither more nor less by reason of my seeing it. Now mark me well: Suppose my eye, being one and single in itself, falls on the wood with vision, then though each thing stays as it is, yet in the very act of seeing they are so much at one that we can really say ‘eye-wood’, and the wood is my eye. Now, if the wood were free from matter and wholly immaterial like my eyesight is, then we could truly say that, in the act of seeing, the wood and my eye were of one essence. If this is true for material things, it is all the more true of spiritual. (II:103-4) "

I didn't suggest anything. Just spoke truth. And besides, any advice other than "just sit" is simply gilding lilies and promoting the same. Of course the problem is doing practices and the solution is to stop doing them. And just sit.

If you persist in meditation practices eventually you will find that just sitting and thinking no thoughts is the way.

from Esoteric Dimensions of Deep Ecology by Paul Davies When the language of direct description—one label for one thing—opens out into the ‘wild country’ of metaphor, then the established mode of thinking, relating and discoursing is rendered useless. What takes its place is a system of analogical or imaginal knowledge, initially seen as madness by habitués of direct description. The anthropologist Richard Nelson writes of the Navajo: "Among the instructions given to hunters is this statement attributed to the divine Deer-people: ‘Animals are our food. They are our thoughts.’ Reading this statement is like walking through a doorway into a wild and illimitable terrain: it opens in all directions. These few words epitomize the pervasiveness of animals—and the natural world as a whole—in the cultures of hunting-gathering peoples." They also epitomize a world in which metaphor is the ‘natural form’ of human expression. An ecology of symbolic practice directly negotiates these bewildering borderlands of expression and establishes a working relationship between specifically metaphorical, poetic language use and the languages of history, science and economics. The implicit homology between disciplines here shows that a practical science, an arcane mystery tradition, and a form of artistic practice all conform very closely at the structural level. It is therefore no surprise to find the mystics calling the cosmos the poem of the Absolute, to find Gaia-theorists speaking of the dance of life, and poets talking about the oneness of life being observable only through metaphor, the ‘perception of resemblances’.

“All beings have their properties which spread Beyond themselves, a power by which they make Some other beings conscious of their life — Spirit that knows no insulated spot, No chasm, no solitude. From link to link It circulates, the soul of all the worlds. This is the freedom of the universe, Unfolded still the more, more visible The more we know—and yet is reverenced least, And least respected, in the human mind, Its most apparent home." William Wordsworth, 1798

I was thinking of posting again to this wanna be a mystic thread anyway and now that I have been encouraged by dialog, perhaps I will proceed…though anything I say could be posted on any thread… thinking about being a solitary, and the silence of meditation and the noise of the monkey mind… and the nature of light… As moderns we have learned to imagine that we see things objectively, scientifically. Light then is regarded as photons bouncing off of things and hitting our retinas, forming a camera-like impression on our brain matter somewheres. Merleau-ponty proves these notions false (in the phenomenology of perception). What we actually perceive is always context driven and not an object in itself. All objects are actually being-in-the-world. All impressions are gestalts in which an object occupies the forefront of our attention while its background is attenuated. Thus all perception both reveals and conceals as a foreground opens up and a background is disregarded. Actually, our notions of light vastly preceded any knowledge of photons and retinas. The scientistic overview is the current religion, the current mythology. The universe = god, the totality. Naive realism and neo-kantian positivism uphold capitalism and so are peddled and bought; as marx says, culture follows the means of production. Ideologies crystallize when status quos are being maintained. What did we mean by “light” before photons were invented and enforced as dogma (pesky little wavicles)? The ancients (pythagoras, plato) thought the eyes emitted rays that illuminated objects in the presence of sunlight. This is actually closer to the phenomenological view than the scientific mechanistic way of seeing. The mind definitely adds value to mechanistic perception. We demonstrably don’t see like a camera but recognize objects in context. We hear a dog bark or a cock crow, we don’t hear a noise which we then interpret. The nature of perception is to perceive in light, but then what is light, what is the perceiving medium? We immediately use the metaphor of light and seeing for knowing and understanding, and these meanings are originary. Seeing is believing, seeing is knowing and these ideas were originally part of the idea of seeing. We see with our minds, with our hearts the ancients would say. With our heart minds. The light of the mind is dialog, discussion. With words we illuminate, and with words we communicate, the two are one. We talk to others and so fix the world as a place in which actions occur, a context. We talk to ourselves and this is what we think of as knowing, as existence. What we have named, we know, if only superficially and often falsely. We are comfortable with the known and fear the unknown, so we are always naming things. Or having them named for us because we fear the freedom of naming things for ourselves. The meditator seeks silence and in doing so confronts “monkey mind,” the tendency of the mind to think constantly, naming all its perceptions and anxieties in the ongoing quest to maintain homeostasis. That is, a comfort zone where immediate dangers are all identified and handled. Through attempting to quiet the monkey mind we come to realize its constancy and pervasiveness. The inner dialog of assimilation is similar to the outer dialog of socialization. Through constant dialog we understand the world and our place within it. We see and are seen, we are subject and we are object. Caught in this dualism, we really don’t know who we are and are subject to anxiety and a constant temptation to inauthenticity. Like all organisms we seek balance, homeostasis; consequently we always feel out of balance: always biased, always skewed. False elation, false depression, all based on delusion and confusion. The meditator - the mystic - may find silence, or silence may find her. The dialog is cut off and we become a solitary. We are in darkness, the cloud of unknowing, the void of meaning. The light of true wisdom, of prajna which does not differentiate or separate; for whom all is one and nothing else. This, alone, is true ease. The tao te ching refers to the perfect state of a baby who has not yet learned to smile. The gospel of thomas: (4) Jesus said, "A person advanced in days will not hesitate to question a little child seven days old about the place of life. And that person will live. For many that are first will be last, and they will become one." The silent is the solitary. Everyone is in dialog all the time, and is never alone, is afraid of being alone. People turn on the tv or radio for the illusion of company, for the creation of context and background to perform their lives. The mystic knows silence. The dialogger is never at rest, never at peace, always in conflict, bucket o’ crabs. The sufferer usually calls their suffering, “love.” Skillful means uses dialog to end dialog, uses words as word medicine to end words and make silence. Thus it is said in zen that the buddha spoke sermons for 49 years and never said a word.

from the discourses of rumi: Someone asked: “Is there any way nearer to God than prayer?” Rumi answered: Yes, but it is also prayer. It is prayer without the outward form. This outer form of prayer is the body of prayer, since it has a beginning and ending. Everything that has a beginning and ending is a body. All words and sounds have a beginning and an end, and therefore are form and body. But the inner soul of prayer is unconditioned and infinite, and has neither beginning nor end. Now, Mohammed, who invented the Muslim prayer, said, “I have a time with God not contained by any prophet, nor limited by any angel next to God.” Hence we realize that the soul of prayer is not the outer form alone. Rather it is a complete absorption, a state without room for these outward forms. Gabriel himself, who is pure reality, cannot be found therein.