Open Letter to a Born-Again Christian

I have no doubt that you have perceived the authentic Divine, but you are seeing it through Judeo-Christian colored glasses. The absolute, infinite, totality of all Universes is no doubt expressed by the teachings of young Rabbi Joshua Ben Joseph, but I highly doubt that what Christians call the Gospels authentically reflects that truth, anymore than the Old Testament adequately transmits the teachings of the Hebrew prophets. Place not your faith in books, no matter how ancient or widely revered.

God (like Jehovah or Christ, far too limiting a word for what I am feebly trying to describe) is real, but quite beyond the faculty of language or any other intellectual construct. To perceive truth is to follow thought until it utterly fails. There, in a stillness and beauty beyond all formal religious practice, beyond both ancient prayers and "New Age" meditation technology, is the totality that orthodoxy distorts into rote and Sophistic discourse reduces to glib, brittle concept.

Faith is surrender to falsehood. The Truth is real. To anthropomorphize it into a Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu or any other image or symbol is to deny its inconceivable immensity.

Beware of easy answers, they are the real "temptation." Beyond the culturally conditioned response of "faith" is amazing grace, the gift of seeing the human mind for what it is, a wondrous processor of input and synthesizer of output. Watch it perform its incredible feats, but never mistake it for your true self, which is one with an infinite unity, universes within and beyond universes, cause inseparable from effect, matter in a dance of mutual transformation with energy, the Truth to which no scripture can prescribe a path.

Accept no substitutes, no gurus, no salvation via bottle or book. There is no cosmic babysitter, no "personal savior," no "father who art in heaven," no "king of the universe." That stuff is fodder, opiate, and whipping post for tribes of intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually immature children. Beyond shiny objects, benign images, and comforting promises is that which is neither a brilliant idea nor a baptismal catharsis. Sleepers, awake....

The Born-Again's Response:

It sounds beautiful at first.... but there's a problem. If truth is something I can experience only on a subjective level, and which cannot be expressed in any logical (as in thesis / antithesis) form, then WHAT GOOD is it? And I mean that on a moral, as well as pragmatic, level. It still comes down to "if it feels good, do it." Doesn't it? If I've misinterpreted you, please correct me.

The Second Open Letter

Yes indeed, you have grossly misinterpreted me. There is nothing subjective about the truth. It is real, and indisputable.

It is NOT a tool via which one accomplishes some goal. "If it feels good do it" implies a lack of sensitivity to one's fellow creatures and the astonishing existence we all share. My inability to put this into sufficiently concise language is an innate limitation of language itself, but for lack of a better medium:

To the being with a living awareness of Truth, causing others to suffer is the equivalent of inflicting punishment on one's self! Obeying the Ten Commandments is fine policy (within limits, one surely is not obligated to honor an abusive parent, agreed?) for living, but the "Truthful Being" -- literally, a being full of Truth -- cannot do anything but personify them, along with the Watercourse Way of Taoism and the "Path" of Buddha, this compliance simply occurs unbidden.

Religious orthodoxy is the result of the genuine Passion that is one with Truth, distorted and diluted by thousands of years of conditioning. To be Truthful is to be free of conditioning, to be ultimately, essentially moral.

A Comment From An Observer

I find it interesting that you're into this stuff. you express it well (as you say, within the limitations of language). It's nice that somebody still explores non-mainstream thinking without talking about channeling and such....

The Reply

Thanks for the flowers. Come to think of it, the trendy "New Age" mentality is just another "mainstream" for those uncomfortable with the older ones. Humans are social animals, and gravitate toward group validation of whatever they're comfortable with, so for those who flinch at the undocumented nature of finding Truth for themselves, it's just a matter of which "club" to join....