knives out wake up dead man good spiritual film. Recently, I saw knives out wake up dead man on Netflix and was surprised at how poignant and special some of the scenes with the earnest priest were.
In many ways, it kind of reminds me of how this Uptrusting platform is trying to be.
In one scene, the earnest priest and the atheist detective are talking about the Catholic Church. A bit of a tense scene as I was watching with a devout Catholic with me as the detective named all the ills and lies of the church.
But at the end, the priest responds, "it's true these are all just likely stories and make believe pageantry. But the real question is whether these stories lead to a beautiful truth or a terrible lie?
It reminds me of Ernest Becker's Denial of Death where he takes an existential view that everything humans do from ambitious projects to having kids are attempts to avoid the vital lie of our mortality.
I asked at a Becker conference, is there any way out of this trap of whatever I do being based on a lie to avoid the truth of my mortality?
One scholar responded, I suppose it depends whether the vital lie is delusional or illuminating. Does it bring out truth or is it covering it over?
Anyway, strong recommend to the film. The detective who-done-it was also spectacular.
Is having children selfish or selfless? Controversial question/interesting discussion time!
Is having children a selfish or a selfless act?
I'll put my thoughts in comments - would love to hear yours :)
The Gospel of Thomas. I like the Gospel of Thomas a lot. Any other fans here? It is so much cleaner than the canonical gospels. No miracles, no biography, pure wisdom.
I see many things that I want to interpret with my current understanding. What's your reaction?
"but I have said that who among you will become a little child will know the kingdom" -> inner child work
"If you do not know yourselves, then you will be in deprivation and you will be deprivation itself." -> a pointer to shadow work
"Jesus said, You see the speck in your brother’s eye but not the beam in your own eye. When you take the beam out of your own eye, then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye." -> you know when you project and don't realize? and you try to help another and you can't, because you yourself are not healed? (it happened to me)
"Those who do not hate their father and mother cannot be my disciples, and those who do not hate their brothers and sisters and bear the cross as I do will not be worthy of me" -> find the anger!
"Lucky the man who has suffered and found life." -> It's good to do grief work, and release.
"Seek and you will find." -> the intention counts, everything else will follow
"Jesus said: Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to that one." -> if you do circling with me your shadow will be revealed ;-)
On public shaming – the Biblical perspective.
I'm new to this website but I felt called to respond to this prompt–
These past few months, I have noticed that my underlying value system (developed over years of working on the self) is reflected fairly well in the Bible.
Here are a few scriptures that resonate for me on this subject
Matthew 18:21–22 “Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.’”
Christ has already died for all the sins of all of humanity (you are welcome to disagree here), so in a sense, all the poor quality actions of all humans have already been forgiven at a cosmic/karmic scale. That is the Truth. So forgiving someone is you aligning with that Truth. Now don't confuse forgiveness for an absence of boundaries here. There is a man from my community who regularly writes hateful comments on my posts, essays, contents in different places. Each of the comment hurts momentarily. I forgive him (because he is already forgiven by the crucifixion of Christ) and then block him on the new Internet surface he has managed to locate me on.
Matthew 18:15-17 “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you… If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.”
Emphasizing a graduated approach–starting privately, escalating only if needed, and always with the goal of reconciliation, not shaming.
Galatians 6:1
“Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should
restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted.”
This one is the hardest and the one that most humans have really struggled with following through history (including myself). The easiest entry point for devilish behavior is in naming someone else's perceptibly devilish behavior. This is reflected in modern day "cancel culture" or in slogans like "Nazis don't deserve kindness". Christians have shown their own susceptibility to this via witch-burning and telling "sinners" that they are "going to hell". It requires gentleness, softness and slowness in restoring someone who has acted wrongly to the Holy Spirit while yourself staying connected to the Holy Spirit. I made a reaction video recently that captures how easy it is to fall prey to poor behavior while condemning a man who has wronged and how powerful it is to stay connected to kindness instead.
1 Timothy 5:20
“But those elders who are sinning you are to
reprove before everyone, so that the others may take warning.”
Public rebuke can serve a function of protecting the community, which is where cancel culture started. But it has slipped into the shadows as who is labelled a "public figure" has gotten diluted.
To close this out, I am reminded of the episode where a woman caught in adultery is about to be stoned and Jesus interrupts it saying–
John 8:7-11 “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone…”
“Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”
This shows two things. Firstly, putting up boundaries when people sin (consider a synonym for poor behavior) in response to someone else's sin, is critical because otherwise the community gets infected with sin. Secondly, while doing so, ensuring that you also ask the original sinner to stop their poor behavior is important too. But both should be done from a restorative orientation.
Grace is our collective safeguard against the society becoming drenched in sin.
We need to recover the idea of the Soul from its destruction at the hands of modern metaphysics and its distortion in traditional Christianity. 
Modernity dismantled the notion of the soul. It took the human being apart to see how we work and said "well, there's no part labelled soul in here, so I guess that's not a thing."
But we actually implicitly live as if there were such a thing as a soul. We experience ourselves as souls, and the people around us as souls.
So to align with modern metaphysics, we have to pretend this is not the case, in exactly the same way that, eg, traditional Christians pretend to believe that people go to heaven when they die.
This pretending causes us great unnecessary distress, and we would be happier, more whole, and more aligned with reality if we recovered a notion of the soul.
BUT WATCH OUT!
Because one of the candidate notions of the soul is that provided by traditional Christianity, and it's a candidate that a lot of people are turning to in response to the problem above. But traditional Christianities notion of the soul is a gross distortion. It sees the soul as a *thing* which you *posses*, that is fragile and susceptible to the dangers of the world, and must be protected from temptation and corruption, through your human lifetime, so that it can arrive intact in paradise. And this is horrendously confused.
We need new notions, new creativity in this area, and a willingness for smart, rational, scientifically literate people to recover the language of the soul.
#DeepTakes
I like using the word "God.". I understand that a lot of people feel like it’s too vague and easy to misinterpret. But I don’t want to throw out such a beautiful, big part of human history because of a level-line fallacy
- confusing all of Religion or the spiritual line of development for the Amber/conformist/fundamentalist version of a particular religion.
I wish i could more clearly articulate why I love the word and what I mean by it, but right now all I’ve got it’s this antithesis.
I like using the word "God.". I understand that a lot of people feel like it’s too vague and easy to misinterpret. But I don’t want to throw out such a beautiful, big part of human history because of a level-line fallacy
- confusing all of Religion or the spiritual line of development for the Amber/conformist/fundamentalist version of a particular religion.
I wish i could more clearly articulate why I love the word and what I mean by it, but right now all I’ve got it’s this antithesis.
... No belief is true, no matter how popular or plausible