Greater Reality Forum
 
Re: Your Book is Great!


Message written by

Craig
May 17, 2009 at 11:20:15:

In Reply to
Your Book is Great!
posted by
Denise
May 14, 2009 at 18:48:26:

 
Hi Denise,

You wrote,
The main message I received all my life was "if you don't do this" or if you do this", you're going to purgatory or hell! And it was all about repenting and seeking forgiveness.

Yes, those are old tribal god beliefs that were held in the first centuries of the first millennium. The concepts of judgment, condemnation, and punishment were part of the view of a god (or gods) that were just like human beings: jealous, angry, self-aggrandizing, cruel to the disobedient, and petty. If the church hadn’t taken control of spirituality through the support of the Roman Empire, humankind would have grown out of those conceptions of God and the universe. But the church kept power for itself, and it took on all those negative qualities. To maintain its control, it kept people ignorant and fearful. Today, we’re finally abandoning the primitive conceptions of a tribal chieftain in the sky. We understand that the Higher Power is pure love, and that those on the other side of life who are helping us do it out of a sense of servanthood and love. There is no judgment or condemnation. We are all at different levels of spiritual growth, but all moving toward unconditional love and servanthood.

You wrote,
I have feared death as long as I can remember. I don't fear it at all any more. Learning what I've learned over the last couple years... when my time comes, I look forward to going home.

Good. The notion of death as the end is simply ignorant superstition. Our culture just has to grow out of it, as you have. It will happen.


You wrote,
I read somewhere (now I can't remember if it was from you or elsewhere) something about people being raised with the belief that your body goes into "cold storage" after dying. For the life of me, I can't remember where I read this... and it was mentioned more than once. I just wanted to say, growing up Catholic, that's a new one to me. Never ever have I heard the term cold storage before. It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie. What I learned was always purgatory or hell... and rarely heaven, because we are all sinners and bad people.

The idea that people “sleep” until the judgment day came out of Paul and is promulgated by the Evangelicals primarily. It’s an odd belief, but much of what they believe is odd. The Roman Catholic belief is at least more like reality. People do continue to live immediately after bodily death. On the next plane of life, there are no hells or purgatories. However, people are in the circumstance that fit their beliefs. If they are spiritually immature, insensitive, self-seeking, and even violent, they will find themselves in a circumstance that fits that, much like the Earth. It isn’t a punishment. It’s just that their lives reflect what they believe. But eventually, they can grow spiritually out of that level, into levels with more loving, sensitive people. That’s rather like a Purgatory, but there’s no one level. There are millions. So it isn’t really a Purgatory. And no one on Earth can affect where someone is in the afterlife. Each person is working out his or her own growth.

Love and peace, Craig

 



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