Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Infallible Authority by JJ Dewey Well, it's been a while since I posted anything to this blog. I renewed my license, and I'm up and running again. I decided to start off by posting the links to a book by JJ Dewey called Infallible Authority. It describes how the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have set themselves up as the ultimate artibors of all things spiritual. By their lights, what their "prophet" says today takes priority over that the same prophet said yesterday, or what another prophet said 100 years ago, what an ancient prophet said in the Bible, or even what Jesus Christ Himself taught. JJ exposes the flaw in this thinking.     1:38:22 PM    comment []

Friday, February 21, 2003

Getting what you really want If you really want to manifest something in the physical universe, you've got to want it in the right way. How desires can backfire. Your conscious and sub-conscious minds must be in alignment. 5:04:48 PM    comment [] Desires and Polarities and Joy A great post explaining what it is like to raise one's consciousness about polarities and experience things "as the are", not "as "we think they are". 4:56:06 PM    comment [] Seeing What I see Seeing what I see... I guess I don't see it that way. I'm not trying to tell you how to live, but I'm describing how it is for me. It's not my own self-defined righteousness. My will is his will, so when I say I am being true to myself, I am only being true to God. My heart is not deceptive and it doesn't play tricks on me. Besides listening to my heart, I listen to my mind, and I pay attention to the higher things of the Spirit. I align these three from the top down. When they are in alignment, I know I am being true and I am being true to myself. I try to live by everything that proceeds from the mouth of God. Sometimes God speaks to me through the scriptures, sometimes through the words of other people, and sometimes he speaks to me directly. It doesn't matter, because I recognize his voice when it speaks. Not to imply that others are, but I'm not hung up on the authority thing where I will only pay attention to Torah, or only listen to Joseph Smith, or JJ Dewey, or Alice A Bailey, or L Ron Hubbard, etc. It's the voice, not the vessel whom I pay attention to. And when I don't hear the voice, I don't pay attention to the vessel. I long ago covenanted to follow God, no matter what the cost; to listen and follow what I was told to do. I do not enter into promises lightly, and God knows this. We trust each other as beloved friends. That's how it works for me, and I would not be true to myself to tell you it was otherwise. I don't know if anybody else has this kind of relationship with God or not. I know it is achievable. 4:41:28 PM    comment []

Tuesday, February 04, 2003

Force and Reason An interesting discussion behind the dynamics of organizations. 7:00:28 PM    comment []

Wednesday, January 29, 2003

References about the Melchezidek Priesthood "Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof." This phrase accurately describes many who claim to hold the priesthood with the authority to act in God's name on the earth. We need to teach about this holy order, and how to develop power in the same. Adam taught that the same order of priesthood as held by the ancient patriarchs in the beginning of the world will again be help in the end of the world. This collection of scriptures is the primer with which we begin our studies. If you don't come away with a sense of awe, and with a desire to truly obtain the rights and blessing of this power, as did Abraham. Go back and study it again.     8:41:30 PM    comment [] God's Message for our Day God has not broken His silence. It's just that many of us never bothered to listen. Here are a number of excerpts from revelations given to various members of the restoration church I was affiliated with. I have grouped them by subject, according to the person(s) to whom the revelation was addressed. In its early days, the church received a number of revelations, but they dealt mostly with organizational issues or were addressed to particular members. I am including these excerpts here because they deal with topics of general interest. 8:31:41 PM    comment [] The Meaning of Holiness Is holiness something you do or something you are? The scriptures always tell us that we must be holy. (Lev. 20:7, Matt, 5:48, D&C 20:69) We speak of the Holy Priesthood, holy temples, holiness to the Lord. In another article I am going to introduce a concept which I borrowed from A Course in Miracles known as the "Holy Relationship." But what does it really mean to be holy? 8:24:34 PM    comment [] The Holy Relationship The holy relationship is the host holy function we can enter into in this world. The Sonship must be reunited, and this reunification happens two people at a time. "The holy relationship is the expression of the holy instant in living in this world." The Course calls the Holy Spirit "the Redeemer of relationships." The holy relationship is the key to peace. If we really want peace, we must join with other minds, for that is how peace is obtained. Your holy brother is holding out a gift to you, and you to him. The gift he offers is himself, unconditionally. The gift you offer is yourself, unconditionally. This is the purpose of holy relationships. 8:23:17 PM    comment [] The Desire for God "There is a human desire for God; but there is also a Divine desire for man. God is the supreme idea, the supreme concern and the supreme desire of man. Man is the supreme idea, the supreme concern and the supreme desire of God. The problem of God is a human problem. The problem of man is a Divine problem... Man is the counterpart of God and His beloved from whom He expects the return of love. Man is the other person of the Divine mystery. God needs man. It is God's will not only that He should Himself exist, but man also, the Lover and beloved."   - Wrestlers with Christ, by Karl Pfleger, p. 236. 8:17:43 PM    comment [] The One Initiator The One Initiator calls each of us at all times and at all places to join with Him in Initiation. That we can hear the call and are able to respond, shows that we are ready. 8:08:36 PM    comment [] Quote of the day "It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) 3rd U.S. President (1801-1809) 8:02:03 PM    comment []

Saturday, January 25, 2003

Quote of the Day "God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the Earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: This is my country." --Benjamin Franklin 2:58:37 PM    comment []

Thursday, January 23, 2003

Everybody's a Pope "I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it." --George Carlin   7:03:36 PM    comment []

Sunday, January 19, 2003

The Bridge This is a poem I wrote a number of years ago embracing my learnings from LDS thought, Scientology technology, and A Course in Miracles. Since joining the Keys list  and since becoming familiar with the writings of the Master DK through Alice A Bailey, I have made only minor updates to this poem to emabace the new teachings as well. For you Keysters, think of the Great Invocation, the Song, and the New Jersualem meditaion. This poem is my form of the New Jerusalem meditation except I have been doing it for the past ten years.For the Mormons, think of the temple ceremony and the truths taught therein. Hoping to see you in New Jerusalem, or on the Bridge! 7:09:31 PM    comment [] A Case for Multiple Lifetimes An article examining the evidence for multiple lifetimes as found in the Bible and LDS scriptures. Portions of this article were taken from an article by JJ Dewey, with some additions ideas added by myself. 6:52:22 PM    comment [] Revelation ----- Original Message ----- From: Ranall <eleazarbenyair@yahoo.com> To: davids_outcasts@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, January 04, 2003 9:31 PM Subject: [888] Re: OBEYING THE SPIRITUALISM As I look back, I recognize that my experiences with organized religion have always ended in disappointment. Whenever I hear someone say "I've had a revelation", I take a deep breath.   It seems that such sayings precede trouble. And many friends cling to it like it is heaven itself despite the experience that it is far from it. PT   Well, you better take a really deep breath... I have probably received and recorded in this lifetime over 300 pages of material. I don't publish it, and I don't even read it, except to check on a fact now and then. People might think this is strange that I don't, but when you start publishing it and canonizing it, you hold divine knowledge up as something scarce and unique, when it ought to continually flow freely. An excellent correspondence is the story of manna falling from heaven. This not to trivialize these experiences. They ought to always be treated as special and sacred, but never unexpected. Direct divine knowledge through experience should also flow from God to the individual, and not exclusively through someone else. A true teacher knows this and teaches his/her students how to obtain knowledge for themselves. One can read this throughout the scriptures, and it used to be taught by the LDS Church, and this was always what attracted me to the Church. I have never seen this teaching play out in actual practice, however. I was once part of a Restoration organization based partly on the revelations I received and partly on the revelations received through another. From our members, we got the same two reactions you mentioned below. Whenever we received a new communication for the organization, people either smelled trouble in the air, or they considered themselves "bound" by the revelation, whatever that means, as if God was using it to tie them up. It was never my intention that either thing happen, but apparently human nature was taking its course. Eventually, the membership rejected both of us as leaders, edited out those parts of the revelations which they agreed with, and tossed out everything else. We did in 18 months what it took the Catholic church several hundred years to do and the LDS church several decades to do: from a divine institution, sink into the depths of apostasy. Looking back on this, I blame everything that resulted on the fact that we created an organized hierarchical church (as opposed to a fellowship organized along family and Priesthood lines). An organized church seems to draw a circle of inclusion and exclusion, with the implication that failure to comply with church regulations results in being cast out, with resultant loss of eternal salvation. I feel that we unwittingly created something quite evil to ensnare and enslave people. I scoured the revelations looking for a specific instruction from the Lord to organize a church. I found none, but I did find references to the effect that the Lord recognized that we had listened to the arm of flesh and the clamoring of the members who wanted a church patterned after the one they used to have. Hey, didn't that same attitude get the Israelites and the Nephites in trouble when they wanted a king? And, I will probably get an argument over this, but I have also scoured the D&C looking for specific instructions from the Lord to organize the LDS church. True, He speaks of His Church in section 10 as the body of followers, and He acknowledges the organization of the Church as an accomplished fact, but nowhere to my knowledge to Christ in as many words, command the organization of a secular, legalistic church, per se. I have repented myself, and don't want to ever be part of such a debacle again. As Blayne said, this is one of those ideas which history has proven time and time again to be a failure. But I know that something is going to eventually succeed. (There's something about that on some of those 300 pages I'm not going to mention.) I think family is going to be a big part of it. I think Priesthood is going to be a big part of it. What's a family, but a group of people who are either intimately related or who choose to relate closely to one another, who are bound together, not by blind obedience to some revelation given by some authority, but by mutual love and by mutual covenant, and by personal ties to the god within. And, through the power of the Priesthood, these families are connected to one another, and to heaven. Now, in some circles the mere mention of "family" or "priesthood" causes people to take a deep breath, so what's in a name? In this scientific age, we could find another name to describe what they are and what they do. A lot of people I know who share the same dreams that we do are calling them "human molecules". I know of other people who are working as using technology to perfect the individual psyche. Now, if I could just get the group dynamics people talking to the individual dynamics people, talking to the Zionists in David's Outcasts, we might stand a chance. But, I was impressed and reminded by Sterling's example of following not only our highest light, but our newest light. I'm staying tuned.   6:12:20 PM    comment [] Pilgrims why are you turning round in circles, what are you looking for? The Beloved is here, why search in the desert? If you look deep in your heart you will find Him within yourself. You have made the pilgrimage and trod the path to Mecca many times. You rave about the holy place and say you've visited God's garden but where is your bunch of flowers? You tell stories about diving deep into the ocean but where is your pearl? There is some merit in the sufering you have endured but what a pity you have not discovered the Mecca that's inside. Rumi from the book: "Rumi - Hidden Music", published 2001 6:05:50 PM    comment []

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