The Gospel of the Second Coming
February 26, 2008
Enlightening interview with UK spiritual and Gnostic author Timothy Freke. Timothy Freke has co-authored a number of books with Peter Gandy on Gnostic spirituality, including “The Jesus Mysteries” and their latest book “The Gospel of the Second Coming”. In addition he has penned shorter works aimed directly at personal enlightenment such as his book “Lucid Living”. This is an-in depth and fascinating discussion about Gnostic and Eastern spirituality in general, touching on all the inspiring as well as sometimes very controversial aspects of this subject matter. Required viewing for those curious about spiritual matters and the importance of it in our lives today, regardless of your own personal background or beliefs.
some thoughts on marriage
February 7, 2008
I have been married for 12 years.
I truly believe that it is the people that make the marriage. Its the individuals that make a good relationship or a bad relationship… realistically the marriage is just a legal document and the ceremony turns into a memory. Another thing is you really can’t believe what you think you see because you just never know what is going on behind closed doors. Sometimes it looks bad, but its two people who are truly, madly deeply in passionate love and other times it looks good but its rotten to the core. My wife and I have out lasted most of our friends and have become freaks among a generation of divorce. I’m definitely not bragging…
And I would NOT say its been easy. It has been one of the hardest thing I have ever done in my life… and I had a pretty rough childhood. If I told you the shit that has happened you’d be riveted to my words. It would read like a pornographic Tyler Perry story (the ones without Madea). I’d be lying if I said its all good. After about 5 years some things get old.. REALLY old. Some things become so comfortable you can’t even imagine ever having been without it.
If nothing else, when you give everything, when you put it all on the line, all of your fears, all of your vulnerability, all of your pain on display for your mate and when they can face that VERY human element when the glowing teenage infatuation is gone and still love what is left, then you’ve found a pretty special person because not many people are up to that task. Even less are ready for the truth; in fact, they avoid it like the plague.
When you really open up and really learn to trust, it is like a roller coaster ride, its scary, and exciting and passionate. It scary because there it a real fear of being hurt, tossed out and dashed on the rocks, betrayed and killed. After a while it can make you sick. When its all over you can walk away a whole lot wiser, but only if you were true to yourself. And that is what I’ve learned about life, love and marriage.
“Above all else, to thine oneself be true” — Shakespeare
Response to spiritual meaning of numbers
February 6, 2008
Here is some feedback I got from Stephen on my post “spiritual meaning of numbers“:
Stephen on February 6th, 2008 11:01 am - Sorry but this numerology stuff ranks with a great deal else as metaphysical discussion. It is IMO a diversion from what is real and a retreat into ways by which thought constructs are made that may appease but do not really satisfy a quest for what is real. In these matters I am guided to some extent by Krishnamurti who walked away from his guru status when he found … reality.
me on February 6th, 2008 11:09 am - Stephen,
The truth, source, reality (whatever title we give it) is untouchable by any explaination. No words, or math or syntax no matter how complete and beautiful can express it properly. All we can do is point. This is just a method of pointing and expressing. I agree, thought constructs have there place but I think a lot of times we get ourselve in trouble when we worship them as idols. Dogma has become the new golden calf.
spiritual meaning of numbers
February 5, 2008
Those who subscribe to religion, occultism and metaphysics have assigned spiritual values to numbers. For example:
1 = strong will; unity, purity
2 = duality, harmony (Yin/Yang)
3 = magic, intuition (Holy Trinity)
4 = stability, grounded (nature)
5 = travel, adventure, journey
6 = Sincerity, love, truth
7 = magic, mystery, enlightenment
I have always believed that meaning is defined within the context of a person experience. So although 7 might mean good luck to you, it may mean hate and lust to me because of my experiences with that number.
Each culture attributes meaning to numbers: Chinese numerology
More examples of spiritual meaning of numbers
THE NUMBER 7 IS EVERYWHERE
NUMEROLOGY:
Life path number - signifies intellect and an introspective, analytical mind. Considered to be a spiritual, sacred, and this is evidenced by the fact that there are seven days in the week, and ancient texts propose that the earth was formed in seven phases.
BIBLE:
In the Hebrew, seven ([b’v, - Sheh’-bah) is from a root word meaning to be complete or full.
It is known as the number of God’s seal.
Example: in Revelation 1:16 — “and He had in His right hand seven stars, ” alluding to the seven churches of Asia.
It is used throughout the Old and New Testament repeatedly with deliberate pattern.
The metaphysical use and meaning of numbers are completely at the mercy of interpretation. As such, it is all over the place with little practical application. That is a shame (as with all metaphysics) its talks around some of the most critical aspects of reality but fails to nail anything down. It is easy to see the influence of culture on the meaning attributed to numbers. The tragedy is that the imposed meaning ends up telling us more about the people and/or culture than the subject they are talking about. Here is a new system that relies less on prescribed meaning, focuses exclusively on the actual perspective of the person which in turn give meaning an absolute path.
Here is an Entirely Different Take on the Spiritual Meaning of Numbers.
We are the numbers. Our point of view, our perspective is the equation, the function through which constant values are passed to produce various results, or meaning.
Essentially, meaning is relative to perspective.
Out of western psychology, eastern spirituality and postmodern philosophy there is a new way to use numbers as a way to navigate awareness itself, the cradle of meaning. How much more enhanced is our meaning if we know its source? Its called Integral Mathematics of Primordial Perspectives. To be fair, it less about numbers than it is about perspectives, so numerology is forever safe.
Integral Mathematics of Primordial Perspectives
Oversimplified description:
Created by philosophical genius Ken Wilber, Integral Mathematics of Primordial Perspectives, we’ll call it integral mathematics, is a comprehensive method of referring to natural points of view that we all have. For example, my first-person perspective would be written as 1p (1-p). 1p = my, 1-p = first-person perspective, but there are other perspectives that I can have from my point of view: 2p = your perspective, 3p = his/her/it perspective.
So, from my perspective, I see that you have a first-person perspective:
1p(1p) x 2p(1-p)
I can also be aware of you from a third person perspective:
1p(1-p) x 1p(3-p) x 2p(1-p)
This means I’m observing your from an objective perspective, this could mean I’m using some theory or some measure or book like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) to evaluated you.
Pathology: Perspective Mathematics
Consider multiple personality disorder (aka Dissociative Identity Disorder). This would be me objectively looking at your multiple personalities:
1p(1p) x 1p(3-p) x (2p(1-p)/n)
n = number of personalities
This may be written wrong, but what I’m trying to express is my first-person perspective (1p(1-p)) view of an objective perspective (1p(3-p)) of your first person view that is (2p(1-p) that is divided by “n” personalities. The slash maybe wrong because Wilber uses “/p” to define something else. By interacting with each of the fractional parts of your first perpective, I can better understand why it has been partitioned. What are you protecting yourself against? What is the common ground of the personailities? One can also explore each personalities perspectives on itself and relationships to the world around it. The end equation could end up looking like the most beautiful monster you have ever seen.
Lucid Dream & Altered States: Integral Math
I had a lucid dream in which I was trying to fly years ago. Once I was aware of my being in a dream, I became peripherally aware of my body. I was able to hold the heavy feeling of my body at bay while I continued my lucid dream. In integral mathematics I would describe it like this:
1p(1p) x 1p(1-p) x 3p(3/p)
I (1p(1p)) had a first person perspective (1p(1-p)) of my body (3p(3/p)). The equation strip away my personal meaning and allows you to put it in your own contexts although you can still understand the mechanics of the perspective. I’m seeing the body as a separate object the same way I might see a tree or my coffee cup, but perhaps (since the body actually holds the perspective) it should be written like this:
1p(1p) x 1p(1-p) x 3p{(1p(1p) x 1p(1-p) x 3p {…}}
Which is to say, I had a first person perspective of my body which contains a my first person perspective of my body which has a first person perspective of my body…. And so on. So it becomes like two mirrors facing one another. The only way to maintain the stability of my lucid dream perspective was to minimize my awareness of my body.
Out of Body Experience
In his book, Astral Dynamics, Robert Bruce talks about similar experiences. But he takes it a step further because his theory is that the body itself continues to dream and have its very own perspectives while the subtle body has its very own experiences. He attributes the relatively low number of the phenomenon to loss of memory caused by the body “overwriting” the “shadow memory” of the subtle body.
So it would look like this…
Sleep & Dreaming mind/body seeing objects in the dream: 1p(1p) x 1p(1-p) x 3p(3-p)
Subtle body experience/altered state of consciousness seeing the sleeping body: 1p(1p) x 1p(1-p) x 3p{1p(1p) x 1p(1-p) x 3p(…)}
Traditional science tends to attribute OBE to some sort of brain anomoly hallucination (despite actual evidence of nonlocal consciousness), but for the purposes of this post we are only concerned with perspective. And the perspective is my first person perspective of the body with a first person perspective of the body… Whatever meaning that Robert Bruce, you or I attribute to this phenomenon should be put in its “own box” so to speak. And with Intergral math, that is easy to do.



