Tuesday, January 4, 2011

SeeSaw Of The Mind

The realm of reality is as vast as cosmic space, it is the knowing mind of sentient beings that is small.

Pao-chih
*************************
Sometimes I ponder with dismay the limits of my own small sentient mind and feel intimidated by the difference between what I know and the unknown but knowable. The task is made even more difficult by the nonsense, my own and others, that litters up the mental landscape.

One thing I did learn, finally, after years of foolishness, is to know and look for a reality that is not apparent to the sentient mind. Things are seldom, or never, what the seem to be. But there is a reality to what they are that can't be expressed in any other way. The great thinkers struggle over terms to make an inexpressible vision as clear as possible. The more extreme, the more spiritual the vision, the more esoteric the terms. When others struggle to understand those terms and make sense out of them a frustration often sets in that turns that struggle into nonsense and allows those strugglers to lapse back into a literal meaning of the terms, thus missing the true meaning, the reality that was in proximity but just out of reach.

Great works of art and literature are screens, not to hide the truth but to depict what is behind the screen in the best terms the artist or wirier can find to describe the vision and to invite exploration. Great stories are allegories to tell what is not known by the limited sentient mind. One can also say the same for creations of mechanics, technology, engineering and science. "Impossible be strange attempts to those who weigh their pains in sense" Shakespeare wrote.

Now we have a prophecy by some befuddled so-called Christians that have pin pointed this year as the year everything ends. Someone through careful Scriptural research he says, has picked May 21st as the "rapture" or Judgement Day, followed about 5 months later by the end of everything. If we are still here after the 21st of May then we weren't saved. Too bad.

Not only does the theory turn back the clock of history and honest exploration to the superstition of the Middle Ages where the earth was thought to be the center of the universe, but it also insists on interpreting Scriptural allegory in the most primitive literal terms. It has reduced the amazing and profound Biblical revelatory writings to nonsense.

Anyone who is really interested should carefully read all 22 chapters of the book of Revelation and explore what is behind the screen of the author's words, what is meant by the four horsemen, the angels with vials of plagues, the great red dragon and what the inspired writers vision is really trying to tell us. It isn't easy, but it also isn't simple minded.

While science continues to discoverer new planets and new laws, let them sit and wait for the great cloud in which Christ is going to descend with his book. But treat them kindly and with affection. They walk among us and they vote.

DB - The Vagabond
*************************

WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?

dbdacoba@aol.com

1 response so far

I await your answer.
DB
******************************

4 comments:

pacifica62 said...

Anyone taking any bets on whether the world will end on May 21? Any oddsmakers in Vegas interested in this one. Boring....yawn....heard it all before many, many times and the truth is I am still here and far as I know the world is too. I don't think these people read the story about the boy who cried "wolf". Time to find a different way to threaten us non saved heathens as this one is getting old and stale.

Beth said...

Ahhh, yes. The big prediction about the end of the world. The latest one, anyway.

What I want to know is what all these yahoos will say when it doesn't happen. I've already read that the guy who started this latest nonsense (I think his name is Camping) has said that if he's still here after that, he'll know he wasn't saved. Is that going to be everyone's excuse? Not a single one of them was truly saved?

What a joke.

Ken Riches said...

I have no tolerance for the end of the world crowd.

betty said...

LOL about May 21st being Judgment Day. The Bible says no one knows the day, not even the Son, and yet this guy things he does know the day. Amazing!

We are living in the end days, we started living in the end days the day Jesus ascended to heaven. The birth pains are coming closer and closer but I don't see it happening anytime soon (though I thought before it might happen in my lifetime, but not any more).

I trust God will have it happen when he is ready and that is good enough for me. One can only hope they are ready to meet him since his word says it will happen in a "twinkle of the eye" and I do believe his word is true. So I don't hold much merit for those who predict when it will happen.

betty