Beware the Pure Spirit, Let the Flesh Instruct the Mind

I'm always interested in what happens with in/out grouping amongst various groups. Karen Armstrong offers the following that caught my attention yesterday. The quote is lengthy but for me, it was important to put this in its proper context. "A tightly knit and isolated community however, can develop an exclusivity that ostracizes others . In Asia Minor a number of Jewish-Christian communities, who traced their origins to the ministry of Jesus’s apostle, John, had developed a different view of Jesus . Paul and the Synoptics had never regarded Jesus as God; the very idea would have horrified Paul who, before his conversion, had been an exceptionally punctilious Pharisee. They all used the term “Son of God”  in the conventional Jewish sense: Jesus had been an ordinary human being  commissioned by God with a special task. Even in his exalted state, there was, for Paul, always a clear distinction between Jesus kyrios Christos  and God, his Father. The author of the Fourt...

I love this picture. Eureka O'Hara is a real gem here in the Tri-Cities area.  She is a fierce ally for our fractured LGBT community.. And of course on the other side of me is my lovely man, my love, my friend and confidante.

Brahman he is and Brahman he goes… "Aryans had always considered themselves inherently superior to others; their [religious] rituals had bred within them a deep sense of entitlement that had fueled their raids and conquests. But the Upanishads taught that because the atman, the essence of every single creature, was identical with the Brahman, all beings shared the same sacred core…Everyone liked to imagine that he was unique, but in reality his special distinguishing features were no more permanent than rivers that all flowed into the same sea.   Once they left the riverbed, they became “just the ocean” no longer claiming their individuality, crying “I am that river, “   “ I am this river.” Such strident assertion of the ego was a delusion that could only lead to pain and confusion. Release (moksha) from such suffering was dependent on the profound acknowledgement that at base everybody was Brahman and should therefore be treated with absolute reverence. The Upanishads...