tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post5600912647631471584..comments2024-03-27T11:16:36.951-07:00Comments on One Cʘsmos: Maps, Legends, and Seven-Dimensional CartographyGagdad Bobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14249005793605006679noreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-64112791033658571712009-07-01T15:45:32.645-07:002009-07-01T15:45:32.645-07:00Oh Chief Ben, didya have to mention bacon! I'...Oh Chief Ben, didya have to mention bacon! I'm still doing the Apostles Fast. A couple days to go.<br /><br />Hmm bacon. Guess I know how I'll break the fast. :P<br /><br />wv: pubstion<br /><br />[Even wordveri is trying to tempt me to the pub. :) ]Bulletproof Monknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-49440357357273729982009-07-01T06:17:35.761-07:002009-07-01T06:17:35.761-07:00Van said...
"Remember, you always have inwar...Van said... <br />"Remember, you always have inward mobility and upward nobility." <br /><br />"I'll chime in with BP on that one too; on those times when the flat urgency has seemed impossible to escape, I've found that looking 'upwards' can give you the perspective to step over and out of the corral... really saved my bacon on many an occasion. That phrasing adds even more vertical lift to it."<br /><br />Van-<br /><br />I cooncur as well. The 0--(-k) corral is no place to keep yer bacon. <br />Thankfully, we have the O--(k) corral in which to save our bacon. :^)USS Ben USN (Ret)https://www.blogger.com/profile/07492369604790651538noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-61802417998692982622009-06-30T21:26:31.921-07:002009-06-30T21:26:31.921-07:00From what I see in scripture, death for the believ...From what I see in scripture, death for the believer is like blinking - close your eyes for the last time here and in the next moment you're being welcomed into the presence of the Lord.<br /><br />I almost can't wait.NoMohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01100042056270224683noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-13161993459805311982009-06-30T17:54:37.449-07:002009-06-30T17:54:37.449-07:00"Remember, you always have inward mobility an..."Remember, you always have inward mobility and upward nobility." <br /><br />I'll chime in with BP on that one too; on those times when the flat urgency has seemed impossible to escape, I've found that looking 'upwards' can give you the perspective to step over and out of the corral... really saved my bacon on many an occasion. That phrasing adds even more vertical lift to it.Van Harveyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08470413719262297062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-522500264304845762009-06-30T17:46:53.987-07:002009-06-30T17:46:53.987-07:00Elephant, yeah... I assumed that was what he meant...Elephant, yeah... I assumed that was what he meant too... I waffled on whether or not to say anything... but... that <b>ass</b>u<b>me</b> thing, has a habit of really coming around and biting you in the ass in the end.Van Harveyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08470413719262297062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-57374985046375682672009-06-30T17:41:04.545-07:002009-06-30T17:41:04.545-07:00Hmm, wandering around on Orthodoxinfo.com gives a ...Hmm, wandering around on Orthodoxinfo.com gives a hint as to why this Church in particular would go into greater depth on the issue of death. There seems to be a strong tradition based on the belief that constant awareness of death protects against sin and its precursor, waste of time.Magnus Itlandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18445902788427523461noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-62212046481152639862009-06-30T17:38:55.234-07:002009-06-30T17:38:55.234-07:00Sorry for the OT, but this from the Honduran's...Sorry for the OT, but this from the Honduran's trying to <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124637740758174005.html" rel="nofollow">keep their constitutional govt</a> in tact,<br /><i>The protests against the ousted president underscore just how tricky the political situation is in Honduras. While Mr. Zelaya remains popular with some segments of society, especially the poor and some unions, many in the middle class, as well as the Catholic Church, army, and many politicians are firmly against him.<br /><br />"Tell Obama he's not in charge here," said Juan Pablo Pereia, a farmer protesting in favor of the new government. "We Hondurans are in charge. We have our laws, our constitution.</i>"<br /><br />Wish someone would tell him we'd like to the same here too please.Van Harveyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08470413719262297062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-91359297489371224342009-06-30T17:12:44.123-07:002009-06-30T17:12:44.123-07:00Van said...
Ehhhmmm... gotta quibble on "the...Van said...<br /><br />Ehhhmmm... gotta quibble on "the filter of our own perceptual equipment"<br /><br /><br />I took it to mean our mental perceptual equipment. Physical seeing is so tied in with thought, yes? For (minimum) example, our eyes are much more, and different, than cameras lenses.Annahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16900344453710081874noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-7127773546305154502009-06-30T16:48:32.752-07:002009-06-30T16:48:32.752-07:00For what it's worth, Sherrard's ideas seem...For what it's worth, Sherrard's ideas seem to be rooted in the same Orthodox sources as Father Rose's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Soul-After-Death-Contemporary-After-Death/dp/093863514X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246405605&sr=1-4" rel="nofollow">book</a> on the after death states.Gagdad Bobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14249005793605006679noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-56901775049524135412009-06-30T16:46:30.430-07:002009-06-30T16:46:30.430-07:00QP -
Businesses apparently figured it out last ye...QP -<br /><br />Businesses apparently figured it out <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/2009/04/25/going-galt-got-going-last-summer/" rel="nofollow">last year</a>.<br /><br />wv sez <b>moses</b> likes the idea!walthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01388218390016612051noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-63198955064507597902009-06-30T15:30:42.305-07:002009-06-30T15:30:42.305-07:00Aquila, I'm willing to hold it as an idea whos...Aquila, I'm willing to hold it as an idea whose time has come.QPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15827536245376441948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-34214728365917821752009-06-30T15:30:11.725-07:002009-06-30T15:30:11.725-07:00Susannah,
interestingly the trial by fire quote al...Susannah,<br />interestingly the trial by fire quote also appeared to me in response to the recent Sherrard quotes. (Although I am not clear on how much it refers to one's personal life and how much to service.)<br /><br />Also, I do not know whether the trial by fire takes place immediately during the process of death or at the time of final judgment. It may be that the sleeplike state of the deceased makes this question irrelevant, as they probably don't experience linear time like we do.Magnus Itlandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18445902788427523461noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-49807647407673327072009-06-30T14:44:19.514-07:002009-06-30T14:44:19.514-07:00Nice post Bob. Brings up a whole host of issues, ...Nice post Bob. Brings up a whole host of issues, many of which raccoons are likely to have disagreement on I imagine, given all the different views on afterlife even within Christian traditions. A couple of my thoughts, for what they're worth.<br /><br />I personally use the term "worldview" instead of "map." I liked your saying, "the menu is not the meal." Have to remember that one. I also liked your expression, "Remember, you always have inward mobility and upward nobility." How true I've found that to be! :)<br /><br />Traditional Christianity teaches two "judgments" for whenafter we die, a particular judgment at the moment of death, and a general judgment by Christ at the resurrection (may he be merciful on us all).<br /><br />The particular judgment is, I believe, the state of one's soul at the time of one's death, carried through into the death state. Here the "judging" is the working out of one's existential condition in life. If you are tormented at the time of death (like Michael Jackson was, Lord have mercy), that existential torment continues in Sheol. <br /><br />Orthodoxy doesn't teach any doctrine of Purgatory however. Rather, the torments we carry with us from life into death are akin (to my thinking at least) to congenital defects we carry with us from gestation to birth. Death before the general resurrection is therefore somewhat analogous to the womb, a place of potentiality rather than actualization. I think Bob wrote in one article a long ways back about how the child in the womb "breathes" water, and upon birth makes the transition to breathing air. I wonder what we will breathe after we die? I hope the Holy Spirit.<br /><br />Anyway, Orthodox pray for the dead because we believe the prayers of the living, and especially the living saints in heaven, are efficacious in healing the souls of the dead, since they cannot pray for themselves in that state.<br /><br />So our mission in life, should we choose to accept it, is to become free of the parasitic (demonic) torments of this life, to attain to true health and well-being, and become dispassionate and truly loving of God and neighbor, through willing cooperation with the Holy Spirit.<br /><br />Yesterday I found a nice video clip on the Orthodox answer to the popular evangelical question, "Are You Saved?" Thought I would share as it is well done.<br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAlCze3ZFjA<br /><br />Love in Christ.<br /><br />wv: indeb (indeed!)Bulletproof Monknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-28851467731712763502009-06-30T13:32:23.612-07:002009-06-30T13:32:23.612-07:00QP: It's been done already, to no discernible ...QP: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buy_Nothing_Day" rel="nofollow">It's been done already</a>, to no discernible effect.Aquilanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-85879810175628721132009-06-30T12:54:56.194-07:002009-06-30T12:54:56.194-07:00T. Dalrymple does M. Jackson
An arms-race ment...T. Dalrymple does <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35399" rel="nofollow">M. Jackson</a> <br /><br /><i>An arms-race mentality develops; and while there may have been a self-mutilation somewhere in the history of the world greater than Michael Jackson’s, for the moment I cannot think of it. Given man’s infinite capacity for innovation, no doubt someone will soon manage something even more extreme. </i>ximezenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-49120971235002390602009-06-30T12:17:25.688-07:002009-06-30T12:17:25.688-07:00with a holey map
columbus scored a new world
sails...with a holey map<br />columbus scored a new world<br />sails up my friendsrobinstarfishhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15665546554663005609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-60735772940677287042009-06-30T12:08:53.801-07:002009-06-30T12:08:53.801-07:00Fascinating stuff. These ideas certainly illumine...Fascinating stuff. These ideas certainly illumine and enrich my musings about the old-fashioned doctrine of Purgatory.<br /><br />wv: inguist <br />= someone expert in languages such as Atin, Atvian, or Ithuanian.Cassandranoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-84170075009928201502009-06-30T11:56:26.383-07:002009-06-30T11:56:26.383-07:00"In turn, one of the primary purposes of pray..."In turn, one of the primary purposes of prayer or meditation is to break the link in the obsessional chain. Being that obsessional thought always skitters along the surface horizontally, you can disrupt it at any time by going vertical, or up and in. Remember, you always have inward mobility and upward nobility." This is so true. I have often experienced obsession disguised as thought, and the only way to break free has been to run to the Heavenly Father. Sometimes I have to riff off the Lord's Prayer just to *begin.* As for Sherrard's view, I think along these lines: "Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire." So yes, you will suffer loss if you don't do the soul-work now. But you will be saved! (That's found in 1 Corinthians 3, btw.)Susannahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16381272662339466736noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-88854970808217138672009-06-30T11:54:33.790-07:002009-06-30T11:54:33.790-07:00Opportunity for collective practice: break the lin...Opportunity for collective practice: <i>break the link in the obsessional chain.</i><br /><br />Denninger calls a national <a href="http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1174-Starve-The-Beast-July-4th,-2009.html" rel="nofollow">"Consumer Strike"</a>. I love this idea.<br /><br />"Yes I Can" do without the iPhone with TomTom GPS I was planning to buy in Austin Friday.QPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15827536245376441948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-40863013725705750922009-06-30T11:31:45.113-07:002009-06-30T11:31:45.113-07:00Sherrard writes that "We must always remember...Sherrard writes that "We must always remember that we can see things only as they appear to us after passing through the filter of our own perceptual equipment, and the degree to which this filter will admit or exclude the reality of what we see, or think we see, will depend entirely upon the modality of our own particular consciousness." <br /><br />Ehhhmmm... gotta quibble on "the filter of our own perceptual equipment", not on the filter, but what does the filtering; it's a small thing that has huge implications. If we say that the perceptual equipment, our senses, filter what we're able to see, we'd might as well check into a rubber room next to Hume and Kant in the Post-Modern hotel.<br /><br />If it were the perceptual equipment, the senses, that filtered what we were able to see, we'd actually be that helpless brain in a vat, at the mercy of our senses and environments, and not only would we never know it, but we'd never have left the Geico caveman enclosure to begin with.<br /><br />There <i>is</i> a filtering system set up, but it is set up by us, through our willingness to passively accept our own first conclusions, setting them as our default goto assumptions about how things are, or other peoples assertions about how things are, never exploring the slightest discrepencies our senses present to us or questioning contradictions further.<br /><br />To the extent you allow yourself to be influenced by your own lazy <b>conceptions</b>, you do "see things only as they appear to us after passing through the filter", but it is a self imposed filter, and you can pull the blinds open, and the first person who is willing to examine not only the status quo, but their own assumptions, they are fully able to walk freely out of those doors of conceptions, which are locked from the inside.Van Harveyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08470413719262297062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-30388777368791975822009-06-30T10:03:54.479-07:002009-06-30T10:03:54.479-07:00The more you quote Sherrard, the more wary I get. ...The more you quote Sherrard, the more wary I get. The notion of postmortem virtual reality sounds more like the Greek Hades or the Norse Hel than the Biblical Sheol, which is a rather more quiet place.<br /><br />Surely he does not believe that the soul is immortal without the grace of God?Magnus Itlandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18445902788427523461noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-18856696985568767152009-06-30T09:30:03.821-07:002009-06-30T09:30:03.821-07:00As an amateur philosopher I've been thinking a...As an amateur philosopher I've been thinking about the paradigmatic nature of OCD. With Freud, I believe it was hysteria, Jung (and Laing) it was Schizophrenia. Those views perhaps were in accord with the psychological and spiritual needs of the times.<br /><br />We know live in the "Age of OCD" and reading this blog has been very helpful, both on a personal level (oh, all my mind viruses!) and a philosophical one that OCD is a very fruitful lens to see human behavior more clearly.<br /><br />I wonder though if OCD is so difficult to see and change because it is so deeply encoded in our brains and nervous system. Can talk therapy reach it?<br /><br />I am thinking in particular of the book, "The Mind and The Brain" by Jeffrey Schwartz which takes a nonmaterialist view of OCD.<br /><br />Any thoughts on the matter would be greatly appreciated.Jackhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06708393262849661076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-43904117511432034302009-06-30T09:23:07.115-07:002009-06-30T09:23:07.115-07:00Yes, Walt. I immediately got that same impression-...Yes, Walt. I immediately got that same impression-- that attending to one's soul is a daily and urgent task, in light of what dreams may come. I don't know where in my past experience or education I've ever encountered such an idea. I'm not sure where I would anchor it in typical theology. But it rings truth like a smoke alarm.Joan of Argghh!https://www.blogger.com/profile/14729682908266300507noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-60821263079096178582009-06-30T08:43:09.750-07:002009-06-30T08:43:09.750-07:00To explicate the details of an accurate Map is the...To explicate the details of an <i>accurate</i> Map is the work of the Cosmologist. The one you describe daily is a BIG-ONE -- let's say, <i>Vast</i> -- and it's obvious you wish for it to include <i>Everything.</i><br /><br />It's a "thread" that runs through all your posts. (Hint, hint.)<br /><br /><br />Sherrard's concept of one's tendencies surviving physical death, leaving one subject to the whims of dreams and dissolution, adds a note of "urgency" to our daily practices, I'd think.walthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01388218390016612051noreply@blogger.com