Experience

5.3.14

– Veracious

Unvarnished

– The best (& only) way to help others (family & friends) to love me, is for me to love them first.

– Lent – no meat, chocolate, ice-cream, cake, milk-shake, eating out (except on Sundays).

– Meat – I have stopped eating mutton & beef, for an ethical reason – the rights of sentient creatures! I eat only chicken & fish. And eat non-veg for not more than one meal a day.

– Are erotica & porn different?

– Confession:

Remembering (GOD’s forgetfulness of) our sins!

– Penitence & mortality,

Retreat & burial,

Repentance & resurrection!

– No mourning, no rejoicing!

– Water – external washing.

Blood – internal purification.

– Wilderness – the ambiguities & complexities of our lives are simplified & clarified by extreme experiences!

– Retreat – intense rest ~ thorough preparation!

– Deliberately entering a place of severe temptation!

– Purposeful wandering

– Settling down in a half-way house…

– Up & down… down & up…

Incarnation » transfiguration » crucifixion » resurrection » Pentecost » Parousia!

– ‘Basic needs’ become an entry point for untold evil!

– Triggering the tsunami – are retreats ‘dangerous’??

Succumb to the sacred temptation & divine wooing!

– Impurity & wrath

Guilt as the internal condemnation-rebuke of our divine nature against the false ego!

– Untested = unproven = uncertain

– Father – the wholly transcendent source, basis & end of all things.

Son – the particular historical manifestation of GOD.

Spirit – the divine in all of nature (especially, the human)

– Time to flex your spiritual muscles, Joe!

– I AM – the eternal self!

– Love – care & share; give & receive; adjust & help; accept & understand…

Do this consistently, and you (& all yours) can be healthy & happy!

– Holy disturbance

– “Dear xyz… Do you think having a memorial service for your late father, every year, is good?”

– Sexual abstinence & Lent.

– Sundays (the Day of the Coming One), even during this season, are NOT part of the usual Lenten austerity!

– From glancing to gazing

– Is fun/pleasure a ‘genuine benefit’?

…What does this question say about the one who asks it?

– What happens when a sceptic engages sincerely & regularly in religious rituals & spiritual disciplines?

– Many of the lines in my journal are ‘hyperlinks’!

– Could death be your greatest ‘achievement’?!

– “Fear of GOD” – reverence for the sublime; aiming for the ideal; belief in the eternal.