Last Time on the Roundabout With Ms Appleby
This is Bonnie and my swansong in our relationship. She and I are going our separate ways (we don't agree on anything -- sure sounds like marriage). She is as sure of herself as I am of myself. We each think the other has a different, corrupted gospel, and that ours is the only correct, scriptural one. We reach out to the other who is wallowing in misinterpretation, misunderstanding, and following man-made doctrines. We each have "the only true way," which the other won't accept. (Yeah, that's marriage. I'll let her have the last word, below.)
I suggest, though, that our only real difference is time, for I used to be her. I.e., I used to be as ardent a dualist as she is. Time and broader investigation brought me to this "other," I believe Moses' original, non-dual perspective and understanding. I still say go listen to Bede Griffiths, ‘a confirmed sacramental Catholic,’ on youtube.com (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zYEFgrc6Lc&list=PLMLdVAb4cprn_TVNYxeP2ZxTv53MxWWqy), who said he learned more in the last two years of his life than all the other years combined. We all have to go through further learning and get past day-one of being a Christian. After we have proved ourselves right about what we believe, we have to prove ourselves wrong in what we misunderstand. For if what we believed correctly on the first day was the end, there would be no further need to search for God with our whole hearts, and we are not there yet.
Bede Griffiths, by the way, uses a metaphor for advaita: "Not one, but not two." That is not correct, of course. The point of without division is one, absolutely. One. That is what fries fundamentalists' minds, for things are named, and name strongly suggests separation, and there is none. You've got a Father and a Son, a Sender and a Sent, a Him and an I, and while we picture them all separately, they are one.
It turns out (in my view) that Moses did not write a revelation of God, the great I AM, who is sitting in a chair on a planet called heaven ruling over his kingdom by some kind of remote control because he is wholly separate from it, he wrote a prayer success manual. Whatever else you make of the ancient Aramaic of the ORIGINAL Exodus 3: 14, Ahiyeh Ashur hiyeh, it means "I . . . am his becoming" (see Victor Alexander: http://www.v-a.com/bible/supporters/exodus_1-4.html). This is most critical to successful prayer, but because it is so critical it was edited to keep it in heaven by priests who preferred that they knew it and we didn't.
I do not know if Bonnie ever noticed that this is a web site about prayer technique. It is not a debate thread or defense of any particular set of Christian or Jewish doctrines (though I entertain queries about almost anything). She never did tell me if she read my posts on the flip. So I'm going to have to tell you anyway, Bonnie. This is your half:
In 1975 I was invited to pray for the gift of tongues, and as I hadn't been baptized in the Holy Spirit, I didn't get it. I realized that I was utterly rejected by God, and seeking to find acceptance, I entered a trance. In a way, my whole life flashed before my eyes, but not as a sequential history. I followed a path in what seemed to be a riverbed where a concrete wall rose up along the side as I pressed ahead, much like modern washes. The trail came to a gap in the wall that was blocked by a huge cube. I couldn't jump high enough to scramble over it, and doubling back to the lower part of the wall was pointless because the path to acceptance went deeper under the block, which was what was wrong with me.
Now, I see that the block is what is wrong with me, the thing that makes me unacceptable to God, but there is no name on it. Hell of a time for twenty questions. I couldn't name it, so I gave it, whatever it was, to God. So he showed me. The shape of a man was scoped out of the mud before me and sat in front of me. The mud was transformed into bone and tissue to become a real man. He lived -- heart beating and all that, and I watched from behind him as he surveyed the earth before him: "I am a man; this is the earth. The sun will set, and it will get cold. I had better use the time to find shelter in those hills. Maybe a cave, or I can make a barrier to keep animals out."
I went from watching the man from behind and imagining his thoughts to being in the man and they were my thoughts. I hit a quandary: find a cave first, or gather firewood first, or gather food first, or plant food for the morrow? I watched myself go scurrying off with a whole shopping list of things to do, and not much time to do them. And then it hit me: I hadn't thanked God for making me, for giving me life. I hadn't asked him what I should do, or what I was supposed to do. I just took the life he had given me and ran off doing whatever I thought I needed to do.
That summed up my whole life: using the life he had given me in his grace and never giving him gratitude or even acknowledgement. I was a thief, a rebel; I exercised SELF-lordship. No wonder God wouldn't touch me with a ten-foot pole: I had "given" myself to him as his peer -- if I didn't like what he did with me, I was going to take myself back. I was distant from him, unsubmitted, separate. I could have crawled into a hole. (I don't know what the ministers who had laid hands on me were doing all the time I was in this trance. It was too late for lunch.)
I saw that "my" life was his life, and I had stolen it. I belonged to him. He owned me. I had to undo my lordship. I determined to end any and all self-control over myself and not move a muscle until he said which muscle to move. I figured I might fall flat on my face and lie there like a jellyfish out of water, but "oh well," and I cast self-control out of myself. The only reason I didn't fall was he caught me. I found true humility and submission. I simultaneously bowed my head in prayer and watched God's glory spread above my head like the rosy glow of a sunset (but it wasn't a sunset; it was Glory!), and confessed "You are Glorious God; I am mud -- a mudman. Whatever you tell me to do, that I will do," and I waited.
After a short while of listening (I seriously was not going to move a muscle) I heard the faintest voice refer to my profession of his being glorious God and my being a mudman: "Remember this, and it is all right." I was accepted. And the love and adoration and gratitude to him welled up in my bowels to my throat and my mouth started quivering on its own and the minister next to me said, "Don't try to control it," (ha!) and I went off in some oriental tongue.
Now Bonnie is probably beside herself, "You confessed that He is God and that you are a mudman, but now you have thrown that away and profess yourself to be God! You idiot, he said to remember it, and then it was all right."
No Bonnie, I haven't lost my salvation. As with so many things in the Bible, what he means by what he says is not what we think he means by what we read. When this episode of my baptism in the Holy Spirit came to my recollection about five years ago, I realized that I had completely misunderstood what he had said (what he "said" was the whole vision). Yes, that I am a mudman, BUT THAT IS NOT ALL THAT I AM!!! "I" became the mudman: "I" am the life that God gave to the mudman that animates him, AND I am the mudman, too. I am both. "You are Glorious God (and me), and I am (you and this) mud." Acknowledging that I am mud does not nullify that I watched the mudman become and then entered him by imagining being him from behind. I am looking through his eyes. God was saying, "Don't forget this; it will come in handy." Living AS a mudman AND as God, for the two are one.
The only God we will ever see is each other.
We are alive because God put his Spirit in us. We are the Spirit. Yeah, we are the mud, too. It takes quite a bit of mental wrestling to come to the understanding that we were the ones who put ourselves into us. We imagined ourselves as ourselves, and in doing so with faith we became ourselves. What we were and are as spirit became completely forgotten, which is the "death" of Christ -- becoming crucified upon these bodies of mud -- trees -- in complete forgetfulness of being Christ. The once to die is done. We enter unnumbered "lives" in this death until we wake up and become like God in a way we were not when we died -- FREE in his nature instead of being bound.
_________________________________________
Dear Mr Steele,
You state: “Pagans are just confused people like us looking at the same thing from another way.”
You may speak for yourself and others perhaps, but not for me, as I am not confused.
Whether you’re “a forty years tongue-speaking Pentecostal” or ‘a confirmed sacramental Catholic’ or a ‘highly educated theologian’ or a ‘popular, acclaimed author’ is totally irrelevant to the issue at hand – that being – your attempt of promoting a different gospel.
Your claim of having the true gospel falls short of the mark, as it is based in ‘human wisdom’ – (led by the spirit of this world) - by first attempting to denigrate scripture and then by appealing to the most basic human weakness – pride (ego, power, self). Sound familiar???
I shall leave you to it.
You have heard the true gospel message and you have chosen another path.
My sincere hope and prayer for you is that by His mercy and grace, that He will reveal to you, by the power of the Holy Spirit, HIS truth, HIS love, and HIS glory - so that you will truly be set free from the confusion you speak of and finally experience the peace that you are so desperately seeking.
Philippians 2:5 – 11
5/Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6/who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God,7/ but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men 8/And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.9/Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10/that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven and of those on earth, and of those under the earth. 11/and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 4: 6 – 7
6/Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7/ and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
(*Note - can't use the Google thing - but it's me - B. Appleby - not 'anonymous').
I suggest, though, that our only real difference is time, for I used to be her. I.e., I used to be as ardent a dualist as she is. Time and broader investigation brought me to this "other," I believe Moses' original, non-dual perspective and understanding. I still say go listen to Bede Griffiths, ‘a confirmed sacramental Catholic,’ on youtube.com (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zYEFgrc6Lc&list=PLMLdVAb4cprn_TVNYxeP2ZxTv53MxWWqy), who said he learned more in the last two years of his life than all the other years combined. We all have to go through further learning and get past day-one of being a Christian. After we have proved ourselves right about what we believe, we have to prove ourselves wrong in what we misunderstand. For if what we believed correctly on the first day was the end, there would be no further need to search for God with our whole hearts, and we are not there yet.
Bede Griffiths, by the way, uses a metaphor for advaita: "Not one, but not two." That is not correct, of course. The point of without division is one, absolutely. One. That is what fries fundamentalists' minds, for things are named, and name strongly suggests separation, and there is none. You've got a Father and a Son, a Sender and a Sent, a Him and an I, and while we picture them all separately, they are one.
It turns out (in my view) that Moses did not write a revelation of God, the great I AM, who is sitting in a chair on a planet called heaven ruling over his kingdom by some kind of remote control because he is wholly separate from it, he wrote a prayer success manual. Whatever else you make of the ancient Aramaic of the ORIGINAL Exodus 3: 14, Ahiyeh Ashur hiyeh, it means "I . . . am his becoming" (see Victor Alexander: http://www.v-a.com/bible/supporters/exodus_1-4.html). This is most critical to successful prayer, but because it is so critical it was edited to keep it in heaven by priests who preferred that they knew it and we didn't.
I do not know if Bonnie ever noticed that this is a web site about prayer technique. It is not a debate thread or defense of any particular set of Christian or Jewish doctrines (though I entertain queries about almost anything). She never did tell me if she read my posts on the flip. So I'm going to have to tell you anyway, Bonnie. This is your half:
In 1975 I was invited to pray for the gift of tongues, and as I hadn't been baptized in the Holy Spirit, I didn't get it. I realized that I was utterly rejected by God, and seeking to find acceptance, I entered a trance. In a way, my whole life flashed before my eyes, but not as a sequential history. I followed a path in what seemed to be a riverbed where a concrete wall rose up along the side as I pressed ahead, much like modern washes. The trail came to a gap in the wall that was blocked by a huge cube. I couldn't jump high enough to scramble over it, and doubling back to the lower part of the wall was pointless because the path to acceptance went deeper under the block, which was what was wrong with me.
Now, I see that the block is what is wrong with me, the thing that makes me unacceptable to God, but there is no name on it. Hell of a time for twenty questions. I couldn't name it, so I gave it, whatever it was, to God. So he showed me. The shape of a man was scoped out of the mud before me and sat in front of me. The mud was transformed into bone and tissue to become a real man. He lived -- heart beating and all that, and I watched from behind him as he surveyed the earth before him: "I am a man; this is the earth. The sun will set, and it will get cold. I had better use the time to find shelter in those hills. Maybe a cave, or I can make a barrier to keep animals out."
I went from watching the man from behind and imagining his thoughts to being in the man and they were my thoughts. I hit a quandary: find a cave first, or gather firewood first, or gather food first, or plant food for the morrow? I watched myself go scurrying off with a whole shopping list of things to do, and not much time to do them. And then it hit me: I hadn't thanked God for making me, for giving me life. I hadn't asked him what I should do, or what I was supposed to do. I just took the life he had given me and ran off doing whatever I thought I needed to do.
That summed up my whole life: using the life he had given me in his grace and never giving him gratitude or even acknowledgement. I was a thief, a rebel; I exercised SELF-lordship. No wonder God wouldn't touch me with a ten-foot pole: I had "given" myself to him as his peer -- if I didn't like what he did with me, I was going to take myself back. I was distant from him, unsubmitted, separate. I could have crawled into a hole. (I don't know what the ministers who had laid hands on me were doing all the time I was in this trance. It was too late for lunch.)
I saw that "my" life was his life, and I had stolen it. I belonged to him. He owned me. I had to undo my lordship. I determined to end any and all self-control over myself and not move a muscle until he said which muscle to move. I figured I might fall flat on my face and lie there like a jellyfish out of water, but "oh well," and I cast self-control out of myself. The only reason I didn't fall was he caught me. I found true humility and submission. I simultaneously bowed my head in prayer and watched God's glory spread above my head like the rosy glow of a sunset (but it wasn't a sunset; it was Glory!), and confessed "You are Glorious God; I am mud -- a mudman. Whatever you tell me to do, that I will do," and I waited.
After a short while of listening (I seriously was not going to move a muscle) I heard the faintest voice refer to my profession of his being glorious God and my being a mudman: "Remember this, and it is all right." I was accepted. And the love and adoration and gratitude to him welled up in my bowels to my throat and my mouth started quivering on its own and the minister next to me said, "Don't try to control it," (ha!) and I went off in some oriental tongue.
Now Bonnie is probably beside herself, "You confessed that He is God and that you are a mudman, but now you have thrown that away and profess yourself to be God! You idiot, he said to remember it, and then it was all right."
No Bonnie, I haven't lost my salvation. As with so many things in the Bible, what he means by what he says is not what we think he means by what we read. When this episode of my baptism in the Holy Spirit came to my recollection about five years ago, I realized that I had completely misunderstood what he had said (what he "said" was the whole vision). Yes, that I am a mudman, BUT THAT IS NOT ALL THAT I AM!!! "I" became the mudman: "I" am the life that God gave to the mudman that animates him, AND I am the mudman, too. I am both. "You are Glorious God (and me), and I am (you and this) mud." Acknowledging that I am mud does not nullify that I watched the mudman become and then entered him by imagining being him from behind. I am looking through his eyes. God was saying, "Don't forget this; it will come in handy." Living AS a mudman AND as God, for the two are one.
The only God we will ever see is each other.
We are alive because God put his Spirit in us. We are the Spirit. Yeah, we are the mud, too. It takes quite a bit of mental wrestling to come to the understanding that we were the ones who put ourselves into us. We imagined ourselves as ourselves, and in doing so with faith we became ourselves. What we were and are as spirit became completely forgotten, which is the "death" of Christ -- becoming crucified upon these bodies of mud -- trees -- in complete forgetfulness of being Christ. The once to die is done. We enter unnumbered "lives" in this death until we wake up and become like God in a way we were not when we died -- FREE in his nature instead of being bound.
_________________________________________
Dear Mr Steele,
You state: “Pagans are just confused people like us looking at the same thing from another way.”
You may speak for yourself and others perhaps, but not for me, as I am not confused.
Whether you’re “a forty years tongue-speaking Pentecostal” or ‘a confirmed sacramental Catholic’ or a ‘highly educated theologian’ or a ‘popular, acclaimed author’ is totally irrelevant to the issue at hand – that being – your attempt of promoting a different gospel.
Your claim of having the true gospel falls short of the mark, as it is based in ‘human wisdom’ – (led by the spirit of this world) - by first attempting to denigrate scripture and then by appealing to the most basic human weakness – pride (ego, power, self). Sound familiar???
I shall leave you to it.
You have heard the true gospel message and you have chosen another path.
My sincere hope and prayer for you is that by His mercy and grace, that He will reveal to you, by the power of the Holy Spirit, HIS truth, HIS love, and HIS glory - so that you will truly be set free from the confusion you speak of and finally experience the peace that you are so desperately seeking.
Philippians 2:5 – 11
5/Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6/who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God,7/ but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men 8/And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.9/Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10/that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven and of those on earth, and of those under the earth. 11/and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 4: 6 – 7
6/Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7/ and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
(*Note - can't use the Google thing - but it's me - B. Appleby - not 'anonymous').
posted by Daniel C. Branham-Steele at
2:30 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home