After that post about NDE and reincarnation I perhaps should make a declaration of an amendment to ‘our’ (the fairdinkchurch – i.e., mainly, ‘me’) thinking, our belief, our ‘faith’.
Well it now incorporates NDE and reincarnation.
The Fairdinkchurch now firmly believes on the basis of anecdotal evidence that the nature of reality is such that we are spiritual beings – i.e. made of ‘spirit’, whatever that is, rather than flesh and blood – and we live on eternally and we come from that ‘spirit world’ to inhabit these human bodies and we return there after leaving these bodies: after death.
That is: the nature of ‘all that is, all that was, all that will be… etc’ , our definition of ‘god’ is ‘Spirit’.
What we did in the Fairdink church was construct an idea of ‘god’ from simple reasoning, common sense reasoning. That was the idea. Just looking at reality as we see it and human beings as we know them.
And we came up with the idea that we need a ‘god’ , as human beings, for it stands in for our direct perception that we’re surrounded by a reality we don’t understand, that we didn’t make and that we have our ‘fates’ as we make our several and joint ways through it. Fates that we often didn’t and don’t choose: so what did? what does?
God. Throughout the ages: ‘God’, or ‘Gods’.
We saw that we could consider throughout the ages people have called all that they don’t understand about reality: god, or a whole collection of gods.
It is a human social and individual necessity. It seems.
Which is alright in the beginning but then gets all screwed up by having people set themselves up as having special knowledge of that god or gods and telling everyone that they must behave in this or that way in order to please those gods.
And still to this day that’s the major problem in the world. Human problem.
People pretending to knowledge they don’t have, can’t have as we see it, and pushing other people around on the basis of it.
Leading to enormous suffering.
Churches. Religions. It’s all about Churches and Religions.
That original idea: that all we don’t understand, that reality itself, that where we came from and where we’re going, that the endless past and the endless future, that the purpose of it all – is God – is fine.
But the end of it: hundreds of different religions and thousands, millions of pretended experts and overseers directing the fates of hundreds of millions of simple ‘believers’ is horrible in the extreme.
All these churches, all these gods, all these pretenders.
Where is, was, will be, the truth? What really to believe?
Well we decided we would believe only that which is demonstrably true. And we wouldn’t go around pretending to be people with a special knowledge of god that enabled us to tell other people what to do and to set them at odds with each other – killing each other over our stories..
So we ‘invented’ our own God.
We started from scratch. Ignored all writings and speeches and stories about who/what god is and decided for ourselves who/what god is.
If there’s a god.
Now there’s a starting place. There’s people all over the world arguing over whether there is a god or not. Killing each other over it.
Well remember we saw that humanity seems to have a need for a word for all that is – the whole immense incomprehensibility of reality.
Seems to need a ‘god’ to ‘be’ all that. To explain.
So that’ll do for a starting place. We would have a god that truly exists
We defined God as ‘all that exists’ – past, present and future.
Just like we surmised the earliest people might have done.
And we worked from there. Putting it all in modern terms, in light of what we know in these modern times.
And that’s about all that’s currently up there on the web site for fairdinkchurch.com. A bald statement that our god is that.
Well now we can go a bit further and ‘flesh it out’ a bit.
And say more – that the nature of ‘all that is’ is ‘love’. Is an ‘energy’ as described in those NDE that permeates all time and space. And that energy is all, is god, is love and – wait for it – is you! Me! All of us!
We can and do still say that our god is all that is. Still. We still say that. But now we know of other people who say the same thing. The NDE people.
There always were people who said it: the ‘pantheists’ who say that god is in everything, everywhere, something like that.
We know about the pantheists and chose not to describe ourselves as pantheists. Chose not to ‘join’ the church of pantheism if there is one.
Why? Because ‘isms’ are full of this and that, instructions for what you must and must not do and say. Of what is and what isn’t right, correct, good and bad.
and so on. If you belong to an ‘ism’ then people figure they know who and what you are. They’ll tell you what you think that you didn’t know you think – that actually you don’t think, hadn’t though of, but they’ll say that’s what you think because you are a member of that ‘ism’, that ‘ist’ – methodist, islamist, deism, theism, communism, whatever… it goes on and on.
It’s called categorisation. Having categories and fitting people into them.
That’s not where we want to be at all.
We want to decide for ourselves what is and what isn’t. We want to have a god we can believe in and know is true.
We have that. Our god is everything that is. So that’s true.
And we don’t want to pretend to knowing what we don’t know or having qualities or properties that we don’t have.
So instead of our ‘ism’ – when, if, it gets turned into an ‘ism’ – having a whole mass of known things, definitions that will automatically apply to anyone who joins our ‘ism’ – our ‘ism’ says that we don’t know everything, hardly know anything and are always in the process of discovering more, of changing our minds inasmuch as we are discovering more.
So if you are part of ‘fairdinkchurchism’ about all that can be said about you is that you believe, you stipulate, that god is everything. And that’s it. No more.
That we chose to have everything be our god.
That there is nothing that is not god.
Well that’s where we started.
And that’s where we still are. But now we have NDE anecdotes saying the same thing.
All is god. Even you and I. They say. So many of them. They come back from their NDE’s and say that, say they learned that, experienced that.
We are not, apparently, as they would have it, not just part of god as part of an animal or a machine is a part only and no more – a car wheel is not a motor – a toe is not a brain – but we are a part of god that at the same time is ALL of god! Like a motor car wheel being a whole car at the same time. Or a toe being a whole person.
Like any part of a hologram contains the whole picture.
Or potentially. Potentially all. That seems to be the heart of the matter.
Well we’ve got some idea of things like that: holograms maybe, stem cells maybe, fractal images maybe. We’ve got some idea.
And it seems our ‘job’ is to come into full realisation of what we are so that we can truly be a ‘whole’ part of the whole. Like being backward members of the team I guess.
And we’re pretty backward alright, aren’t we?
Well not really. We can look at this world and see untold horror in it almost everywhere. Makes us look totally backward.
But I guess we shouldn’t forget that there’s millions of totally excellent human beings all over this world doing a really incredible job of helping and loving and so on…. doing the right thing..
In fact really that’s the majority. Human beings, decent human beings, trying to be decent human beings and find some happiness and give their children, their families, some happiness.
That’s the majority.
But it’s easy to forget that when we look at the terrible history of wars and murders etc. When we look at the injustice and horrors of the world today.
But they’re both true: the majority is good. Good is everywhere. Love is everywhere and it is spreading. Winning. And bad still exists in far too many places and situations.
So, yep, it’s a real thing. Come down from heaven, from the spiritual world and inhabit a frail, fallible, carnal human body and try to practice love – the unconditional love that apparently exists in ‘heaven’.
It takes some doing. But there’s a clear need.
So it’s all very real.