Ed's spirituality, And yours. Options

[GvB]

Hello!

Sandkind: I think you are right.

I'll change it into people who have taken notice of Ed's lyrics and reject it immediately.

GvB.

[livegracefully]

But are they all the same? This is something I still struggle with... for instance, Buddhism and Christianity both have very different metanarratives explaining humanity and God/gods. Only certain kinds of Christianity can be said to have the same overarching vision as Buddhism. And even within Buddhism, you have Theravadans and then you have Pure Land (and everything inbetween, not to mention Americanized versions of Buddhism). I don't think I buy into the fact that all religions are about the same thing.

Granted, love and similar themes may be present in all religions, but the purpose of love is sometimes very different. In the end, does it matter more that we just love, period, rather than what we think the significance of that love is? Does this negate the supernatural and metaphysical cosmologies that different religions claim to know about? I don't know, but I tend to think it does.

In your studies, have you read much about the Children of the Law of One? You would probably find it interesting, considering the questions you raise.

Good thread.

[Pokey]

Ed's spirituality sometimes pisses me off. At times it seems all about saying the most simple things in the most complex way trying to sound intelligent .. wtf? I can't remember who originally said it but the quote went along the lines of "To say something simple in a complex way is nothing, to say something complex in a simple way is everything" .. or something along those lines. But also as simple as SFBM lyrics are, I don't think that is exactly saying complex things in simple ways .. it's just saying simple things in simple ways.

I hate the way people seem to think the wankier you say things the deeper and more intelligent you are. God to me some of Ed's interviews are almost embarrassing, I find wit in an interview much more interesting.

That being said what Ed actually believes in is up to him .. I can't say I claim to know what he believes because well .. I don't think anyone does. Obviously love and water are the two most important things in his life. Possibly beer as well.

I think there is a fine line between believing in multiple religions and respecting them. Ed seems to think every religion in the world is the right one, but I'm sure what he's really trying to say is that whether they're right or wrong, they all, usually, have a good message somewhere in them that we can all get something from. It's when spiritual people seem to think that more than one religion is correct (and yeah some people do think that) is when it loses me .. how can you believe in two religions that completely cancel each other out?

I myself am not very spiritual or religious .. I was brought up as a catholic until about age 14.
I don't feel there is enough evidence provided by any religion to have my devote my life to it. But I don't deny that spirituality in some form or another exists ... chi for example is something I believe, Karma certainly has effects in life. But I don't worship any God.
I try to live my life to the best of my ability and be the best person I can be, and let me be judged at the end on that by whoever or whatever is or isn't there, not judged on how often I worshiped them and told them how great they are.

True that religion does give some people strength and for all the bad it has caused and all the wars it has and continues to cause, it does do good too. Yeah I believe personally that everyone who is practicing a religion is wasting their time, just my opinion .. the same way catholics would believe I am going to hell because I don't follow what they believe to be the only true path. But I do accept other people's rights to follow whatever religion they want.

I don't think that because I like to light candels in the lounge or in my bedroom and listen to chill out music and just "meditate" doesn't mean I'm spiritual.

Anyways, interesting thread.

[Dutch Sparkle]

Good thread indeed.

Well, the diversity in reactions show exactly why religion and spirituality is a very personal thing..

I'm not religious myself, but I do consider myself as spiritual. Things happen in your life, and sometimes you just can't explain them rationally, that's how I see it. I choose to believe that there's something more than what we are 'here'. Ed's lyrics inspire me, but sometimes they also leave question marks.. and make me think. And that's probably exactly what he meant to do while writing them.

I do feel that Ed's lyrics on TC and TDTH, are still the best and bring out the best of that spirituality. Well, at least to me.

[Staycie]

I really get a strong spiritual message from many of Ed's lyrics. I could discuss that for hours.

You mentioned "I Alone" so I thought I'd respond with something based on a post that I made on the friendsoflive.com board some months ago. It has to do with a philosophical interpretation of the song.

I listened to an interview with Ed once in which he discussed I Alone and he mentioned that he was reading alot of Krishnamurti at the time and the lyric "and the greatest of teachers won't hesitate to leave you there, by yourself, chained to fate" pertains to the fact that you must investigate and discover spirituality for yourself and not just rely on the "truths" told to you by others such as so-called religious leaders. The lyrics to I Alone always challenged me because they relate in large part to the concept that I just described, but I always thought that the lyrics "I Alone love you" was simply saying that I alone love you -- that is -- I am the only one that loves you. I always viewed that passionately delivered lyric to be a love seronade to someone and it resonated with me as an emotional line that someone would deliver to a girlfriend or something.

Here is a quote from Jiddu Krishnamurti:

"Aloneness Is Not Loneliness

Though we are all human beings, we have built walls between ourselves and our neighbors through nationalism, through race, caste, and class—which again breeds isolation, loneliness.

Now a mind that is caught in loneliness, in this state of isolation, can never possibly understand what religion is. It can believe, it can have certain theories, concepts, formulas, it can try to identify itself with that which it calls God; but religion, it seems to me, has nothing whatsoever to do with any belief, with any priest, with any church or so-called sacred book. The state of the religious mind can be understood only when we begin to understand what beauty is; and the understanding of beauty must be approached through total aloneness. Only when the mind is completely alone can it know what is beauty, and not in any other state.

Aloneness is obviously not isolation, and it is not uniqueness. To be unique is merely to be exceptional in some way, whereas to be completely alone demands extraordinary sensitivity, intelligence, understanding. To be completely alone implies that the mind is free of every kind of influence and is therefore uncontaminated by society; and it must be alone to understand what is religion—which is to find out for oneself whether there is something immortal, beyond time.

The Book of Life - December 2"

And here is another one:
"Only in Aloneness Is There Innocence

Most of us are never alone. You may withdraw into the mountains and live as a recluse, but when you are physically by yourself, you will have with you all your ideas, your experiences, your traditions, your knowledge of what has been. The Christian monk in a monastery cell is not alone; he is with his conceptual Jesus, with his theology, with the beliefs and dogmas of his particular conditioning. Similarly, the sannyasi in India who withdraws from the world and lives in isolation is not alone, for he too lives with his memories.

I am talking of an aloneness in which the mind is totally free from the past, and only such a mind is virtuous, for only in this aloneness is there innocence. Perhaps you will say, "That is too much to ask. One cannot live like that in this chaotic world, where one has to go to the office every day, earn a livelihood, bear children, endure the nagging of one's wife or husband, and all the rest of it." But I think what is being said is directly related to everyday life and action; otherwise, it has no value at all. You see, out of this aloneness comes a virtue which is virile and which brings an extraordinary sense of purity and gentleness. It doesn't matter if one makes mistakes; that is of very little importance. What matters is to have this feeling of being completely alone, uncontaminated, for it is only such a mind that can know or be aware of that which is beyond the word, beyond the name, beyond all the projections of imagination.

The Book of Life - December 4"
In view of the fact that Ed was influence by Krishnamurti at the time, I think the lyric "I Alone" is not about what I used to think it was about at all! If you do a Google search on some of Krishnamurti's writings you will see that the concept of I Alone means to Krishnamurti, as described in the quote above something like this: "To be completely alone implies that the mind is free of every kind of influence and is therefore uncontaminated by society; and it must be alone to understand what is religion—which is to find out for oneself whether there is something immortal, beyond time." One of Krishnamurti's principles is that the only way to reach spiritual liberation and enlightenment is to first free one's self entirely from the thousands of years of bias and belief and ethnocentricity and the dogma of others, etc. Once you are "Alone" without those influences, then you can truly love. Then you can truly find "religion". I Alone doesn't just mean "just me - I'm the one that loves you" or "I'm physically alone". It is much more profound.

In light of that, I think one might hear that song completely differently and read the lyrics in a new light. And it is a million times more powerful than just professing your love for a girl.

this makes me want to know more....................... i'm looking up Krishnamurti's principles right now..............

This post has been edited by Staycie: Jun 1 2006, 11:12 pm

[FishOutaWater]

I have spent a fairly decent amount of time studying many of the worlds religions and have seen through my own studies of Hinduism and vedic teachings, Buddhism, Taoism, Kabbalah, Juddaism, and “mystical” traditions of Christianity and other modern, academic studies of Christianity and the meaning of Jesus’s life and message (see the bookshelves of your local bookstore for the works of Borg, Eisenman, Crosson, Vermes, Pagels etc. and the Gospel of Thomas, the Dead Sea scrolls and other ancient discovered texts) that all of them have many, many things in common when you strip away the window dressing (i.e. traditions and labels for the beliefs). And what I have personally realized is that all world religions seem to be just different rivers leading to the same ocean.

With respect to main-line, establishment Christianity, you have to do some studying to realize that the beliefs and dogmas and traditions, and the story of belief and salvation and heaven and hell, may not be the only (or correct) understanding of what Jesus was all about, and maybe the idea that “belief in” Jesus is the only path to “salvation” may not be a correct understanding of what Jesus talked about. If you study the political, social, economic and religious context of Jesus’s time, and you study the timing and context of when the 4 gospels (and other gospels and writings) were written, edited, translated and retold, and look at what Jesus’s parables and teachings such as the Lord’s prayer and the sermon on the mount and the golden rule, etc. were all about, I think you can arrive at an understanding of Jesus’s message that was not all about him and his death and resurrection, but rather about loving others as yourself, being compassionate, being non-judgmental and not discriminating, seeking social justice and spiritual transformation, not placing the religious “law” above love and compassion, and not being attached to riches, or status.

I believe that there IS a unifying theory among all of those religions that make them all the same. That principle is that attachment to external things that bring us pleasure and aversion to external things that give us pain and clinging and mental formations and duality and judging and separation are all the antithesis of the light of the creator. Our ego mind creates attachment to people, places, things, feelings and experiences that make us feel positive, and aversion to those things that we perceive as negative, and it uses that external object referral to create a separate self sense. This endless cycle of attachment and aversion to things that we crave, creates personal and inter-personal suffering. No matter what you obtain, you are still not happy if you derive happiness from obtaining those things. Different spiritual paths call this the ego, the vessel, the satan, samsara or other terms.

But the transformational path to liberation, salvation, awakening, the “kingdom of God” etc. is the recognition of and unhooking from this ego mind, and the apprehension of, and awakening to, the big universal consciousness that has no birth or death (call that God or light or spirit or consciousness or salvation or the buddha mind or whatever) through prayer, meditation practice and a practice of compassion, wisdom and altruism. This light of the creator is right here and right now. This concept really is common among all of those traditions.


From the factual, scientific perspective, have you ever just sat and pondered the fact that everything, including ourselves, is LITERALLY AND SCIENTIFICALLY all just one big flow of the same force of energy that just appears to us as matter and form. That makes us all One. That gives a whole new meaning to “you are my brother”, “do unto others as you would have done unto you” and “you are the world” and “we are all one”. Where do we go when we die? Back into the cosmic energy source. In fact, the eastern mystics would say that we are not born and we do not die. Those are illusions.

Perhaps the best metaphor for me about our true nature of reality under the theory of modern physics and the concept that we are all one, is this metaphor that I have heard many times. We can look at a wave in the ocean and identify it as a wave. And the wave identifies itself as a wave, separate from the ocean. But the wave is water just as the ocean, and it is the ocean, one in the same. The wave can crash onto the beach and “die” into the sand, but where does it go? It doesn’t go anywhere. It returns to the ocean. But it never left the ocean because it was, all along, not separate from the ocean, but one with the ocean. There is no separate wave from the ocean. Similarly, we now know that everything in the universe is one big pool of pulsating energy. The same ONE form of energy and the same source of energy exists as the sole component of all things. This is what modern scientists understand about our universe. That is the ocean in the metaphor. And we are waves. Expressions of the universe that are waves of the energy. And we see ourselves as separate waves. Separate from everything else. But we are one with the ocean. We arise from it and return to it and we are the same as it, all along. We may lose the form of a wave (when we die), but it is then that we realize that we were the ocean all along.

What if we took away all of that which is created in our minds as Krishnamurti and Buddhism and Hinduism and Kabbalah and all forms of spirituality suggest that we do? What if we are no longer controlled by our ego mind. What would we be left with? Those spiritual traditions say that we would be left with pure, unadulterated consciousness. A sense of oneness with all things. No beliefs that I am right and he is wrong. No prejudice. No anger. No war. No judgment. No rushing. No attachment. No fear. No division. I am the same as you. I can love you just as I can love myself or my son or my daughter. No religion. No belief that something happened 2,000 years ago as a sacrifice for original sin committed by Adam, so God can forgive those who form a belief in their minds that it happened, and everyone else who doesn’t believe that will be punished by a God who sits in judgment. No God who wants a jihad of death and destruction against infidels. From this oneness, un-negotiated and un-contaminated by thought and conditioning, a person could have only one response to the world... compassion and love.

And I think that this could be the oneness and love that Ed has written about from MJ all the way up to and including SFBM.

And when I listen to SFBM, I personally hear many references to this love and state of presence and consciousness and awakeing in songs like Love Shines, Get Ready, Wings, All I Need and You Are Not Alone.

[LiveOne]

Wow - great post, Fish. I hear exactly what you are saying...

[teressa]

I'll second that. Absolutely beautiful post. I loved the wave analogy.
I also totally agree about SFBM. That CD speaks to me on so many levels.

[GvB]

Hi Everybody!

With respect to main-line, establishment Christianity, you have to do some studying to realize that the beliefs and dogmas and traditions, and the story of belief and salvation and heaven and hell, may not be the only (or correct) understanding of what Jesus was all about, and maybe the idea that “belief in” Jesus is the only path to “salvation” may not be a correct understanding of what Jesus talked about. If you study the political, social, economic and religious context of Jesus’s time, and you study the timing and context of when the 4 gospels (and other gospels and writings) were written, edited, translated and retold, and look at what Jesus’s parables and teachings such as the Lord’s prayer and the sermon on the mount and the golden rule, etc. were all about, I think you can arrive at an understanding of Jesus’s message that was not all about him and his death and resurrection, but rather about loving others as yourself, being compassionate, being non-judgmental and not discriminating, seeking social justice and spiritual transformation, not placing the religious “law” above love and compassion, and not being attached to riches, or status.

I'm Catholic (not very strickt), but I totally agree with this!

GvB.