@fmf saidBrihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.4.5-6
“It all begins and ends in your mind. What you give power to, has power over you, if you allow it.” Leon Brown
Your thoughts on this?
Now as a man is like this or like that,
according as he acts and according as he behaves, so will he be:
a man of good acts will become good, a man of bad acts, bad.
He becomes pure by pure deeds, bad by bad deeds.
And here they say that a person consists of desires.
And as is his desire, so is his will;
and as is his will, so is his deed;
and whatever deed he does, that he will reap.
John 8
"34Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin."
" 31 ...If you [abide] in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; 32and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
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@ThinkOfOne
Another wise word from L, Brown, who I never heard of before.
“Bitterness is a result of clinging to negative experiences. It serves you no good, and closes the door to your future.”
― Leon Brown
From https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3213972.Leon_Brown
@sonship saidI did look within myself and I did listen to my own instincts and the result was that I shed the kind of superstitions that you have. Furthermore, I do not "blame" the Church or Christianity or the Christians around me for the decades of barking up the wrong religionist tree. Indeed, I basically recognized that it all begins and ends in our minds and that what we give power to, has power over us, if we allow it.
Before you look to blame another,
look within yourself,
for at some point you have
not listened to your own instincts.
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Man is of three parts - spirit and soul and body. The mind is a part of the soul. In the fall of man it ascended about the spirit to become the leading part. But this situation is abnormal as the highest function of man was intended to be the human spirit.
When the human spirit became comatose and deadened from the fall the mind ascended to the topmost position yet putting things in man's being out of balance.
To say that the mind of man was originally to be undeneath the spirit of man is not to say the mind of man is not important. It is to say that in the fall of man it has risen higher than what was suppose to be the highest function in humanity - the human spirit.
The mind is a part of the soul.
The conscience is a part of the spirit. So the mind is very important. But without the proper function of the human spirit including the conscience, one's humanity is incomplete.
It should not then begin and end with the human mind.
But the human mind is very important.
@sonship saidYou have spent years trying to dismiss our disagreements [and those with others] about the meaning of life and all the rest of it as the product of emotional shortcomings on my part ~ bitterness, anger, revenge, hysteria, diseased mind, stupidity, dishonesty, unclean dog nature, "faeces" etc. A kind of ever-present mains hum ad hominem demeanour that you have. My Christian years were not a "negative experience", not least because the door to my future [where I am now] did not get closed.
“Bitterness is a result of clinging to negative experiences. It serves you no good, and closes the door to your future.”
@sonship saidIs your ideology about "the fall of man" perhaps a good example of what the OP quote is getting at?
Man is of three parts - spirit and soul and body. The mind is a part of the soul. In the fall of man it ascended about the spirit to become the leading part. But this situation is abnormal as the highest function of man was intended to be the human spirit.
When the human spirit became comatose and deadened from the fall the mind ascended to the topmost position yet puttin ...[text shortened]... .
It should not then begin and end with the human mind.
But the human mind is very important.
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The mind cannot touch God directly.
To try to touch God directly with the mind is like trying to smell color. Or it is like trying to hear the sound of the color blue.
To attempt to hear color is to use the wrong organ to substantiate the reality of color. But you can use your eyes, the proper organ, to substantiate the existence of color.
To substantiate the spiritual reality of God the mind is the wrong organ to do so directly. The human spirit through prayer is the proper human organ to substantiate the reality of God.
Then the mind is useful to interpret what the human spirit is substantiating directly through repentance and prayer. Repentance toward God is also something in the human spirit.
So it does not all begin and end with the mind in the realm of the entire use of our created being.
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“It all begins and ends in your mind. What you give power to, has power over you, if you allow it.”
"IT" ... may indeed with some people all begin and end with the mind. That does not mean that "IT" is satisfactory to the entire need of a person.
Sure, an atheist may say that "IT" all begins and ends with his mind. But his "IT" may not include his entire created humanity.
His "IT" beginning and ending with the use of the mind may in fact leave a crucial other part of his total humanity neglected.
In which case it would be like a three dimensional being moving only in the realm of two dimensions. One whole crucial part of his life is missing.
Though his "IT" for which he settles all begins and ends in the mind.
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This quote from Leon Brown I concur with fully.
“Only Jesus is able to bear the weight of the center. Your Blackness cannot. Your Whiteness cannot. Your American-ness cannot. Your “Whatever-ness” cannot.”
― Leon Brown, All Are Welcome: Toward a Multi-Everything Church
I know as of yet nothing about Leon Brown, as I scan through his extensive number of sayings at -
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3213972.Leon_Brown
Biblically speaking this realization I would say involves something of the human conscience. And the conscience I have been taught and convinced is a part of the human spirit.
There is a distinction between the mind of man and the spirit of man. The mind of man is a part of the soul of man.
These parts are intended to coordinate together and not to be antaganistic against one another.
Saying man has a human spirit within which is his conscience is not to say the mind is not important or should not be trained and filled with good knowledge.
@sonship saidDo you think...
"IT" ... may indeed with some people all begin and end with the mind. That does not mean that "IT" is satisfactory to the entire need of a person.
It all begins and ends in your mind. What you give power to, has power over you, if you allow it.
...explains why people have other religions (and not yours)?
@sonship saidTake a breath, sonship. This thread was hoping for something other than a dogma-frenzy.
Biblically speaking this realization I would say involves something of the human conscience. And the conscience I have been taught and convinced is a part of the human spirit.
There is a distinction between the mind of man and the spirit of man. The mind of man is a part of the soul of man.
These parts are intended to coordinate together and not to be antaganistic agai ...[text shortened]... nce is not to say the mind is not important or should not be trained and filled with good knowledge.