Truth, Good, Life and Time - what are they and what do they mean?

Remember, these are my views of the teachings found in Neale's "Home with God" and other CwG books. I encourage you to add your comments to this blog - I will reply to any comments you take the time to enter.

There are some themes that recure throughout the CwG books and HwG in particular. One is the idea that you shouldn't believe a word "I" say (no matter who the "I" refers to). This is because everyone has their own truth that comes from their own perspective. Your perspective is different from anyone elses, even if you have a twin sibling. Other people can help you recognise your truth, but only you can experience it. So, lets take a closer look at some definitions.


In Home with God, there are statements like:
The only truth exists within you.
You are the only one that can take you to your truth.
Other people can help you access your truth, but you have to take you there.
Everything you need to know is within you.
You have nothing to learn, you only need to remember.


We spend our whole lives thinking we need to learn something, from someone else. The "other" guy has all the answers, I just need to listen and learn and apply it. But, who should I listen to? If you want to learn to play the piano, you might want to find a teacher that has 20 years of experience at playing the piano (they might not be very good though). Or, you might choose a pianist that plays beautiful music that moves your soul (even though they have only been playing for a year or two). Or, you may choose a skilled teacher that isn't the best player, but is very good at teaching the basics. Or, you may choose to learn something from all three. Either way, you still can't play the piano yourself unless you remember how.

Truth
Wikipedia says:
"A common dictionary definition of truth is "agreement with fact or reality".
There is no single definition of truth about which the majority of philosophers agree. Many theories of truth, commonly involving different definitions of truth, continue to be debated..."


my definition:
There is no such thing as absolute Truth or Objective Reality. Every idea or concept is understood from your own perception which is created from your own perspective. What you believe is what you will see. What you expect is what you will create.


Everything that is observed is “changed” (or created or discovered) by the observer.
Don't believe a word that anyone says. Don't make your decisions based on someone else’s understanding, even if you respect their wisdom. Allow the wisdom of others to guide you, but not direct you. You have your own direct connection to the source of all wisdom - use that.

If your life is operating at an "automatic" level (using reaction), you are living from your subconscious level, through your conditioned mind, which was programmed by other people.


If you consciously think about your choices and decide based on what will best fit your own chosen goals and intentions, you are living from your own experiences.


If you allow your superconscious to influence and guide your intentions and your decisions, you are living for your soul.


If you align all three parts of your being and make your way based on what is "best" at all levels, you are using your supraconsciousness (or Christ Consciousness) to create the perfect experiences for yourself and for everyone and everything else.

Good
Wikipedia says:
In religion, ethics, and philosophy, the phrase, good and evil refers to the evaluation of objects, desires, and behaviors across a dualistic spectrum —wherein in one direction are those aspects which are morally positive, and the other are morally negative. The good is sometimes viewed as whatever entails reverence towards either life, continuity, happiness, or human flourishing, while evil is given to be the support for their opposites. Many religious and philosophical views will tend to agree that "good and evil" are abstract concepts and not absolutes. However, there is a general view that the terms are treated as if they were absolutes.

my definition:
Good (anything of GOD?)
Thoughts, Words, Actions, Feelings, Events, Results, that lead you towards the Outcome that you said you wanted.

Bad (EVIL - anything that doesn't allow you to LIVE and be FREE)
Thoughts, Words, Actions, Feelings, Events, Results, that lead you away from the Outcome that you said you wanted.

Life
Wikipedia says:
Life is a condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects, i.e. non-life, and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally. In physical terms, life is an organism that feeds on negative entropy.

my definition:
Life is all there is. There is nothing that is not alive. Everything in the physical universe is made up of the same stuff, vibrating in different ways. This stuff can move from the physical universe into the spiritual universe and back again. It can leave from one place and return in another place. It can exist in multiple places at once. It appears to us in the way that we expect it to appear. Its appearance is created by our consciousness - our thoughts, words and deeds.

Our collective consciousness creates our collective world and our own consciousness creates our personal world.


Time
Wikipedia says:
There are two distinct views on the meaning of time. One view is that time is linear and part of the fundamental structure of the universe, a dimension in which events occur in sequence, and time itself is something that can be measured. This is the realist's view, to which Sir Isaac Newton subscribed.

A contrasting view is that time is part of the fundamental intellectual structure (together with space and number) within which we sequence events, quantify the duration of events and the intervals between them, and compare the motions of objects. In this view, time does not refer to any kind of entity that "flows", that objects "move through", or that is a "container" for events.


This view is in the tradition of Gottfried Leibniz and Immanuel Kant, in which time, rather than being an objective thing to be measured, is part of the mental measuring system. The question, perhaps overly simplified and allowing for no middle ground, is thus: is time a "real thing" that is "all around us", or is it nothing more than a way of speaking about and measuring events?

my definition:
Time is an illusion, created by our mind and our memory. The only reason that we experience time is because we remember our past. For people with no short or long term memory, every moment would be a new moment. They would be forced to live solely in the present. They need other people to help them create a sequence of events and therefore a concept of past, present and future. This is how children experience their lives – hence, “to enter the kingdom of heaven be as children”.


The Time/Space continuum exists everywhere at one time. We can choose to experience any part of it at any period at any time.


Neale describes it as a tunnel with pictures on all the walls, ceiling and floor. We walk down the tunnel at a constant speed but we focus our attention on specific parts of the images. This can create the illusion that we either slow down time or speed it up, depending on how long we focus on a single point, then quickly move our attention forward to another spot.


The tunnel is full of images that have already been placed there, but using our conscious mind, we can re-paint them ahead of us. What we think about while looking at this moments images will either confirm or change the images ahead of us. In other words, depending on our actions today, we can accept the default tomorrow that our sub-conscious, reaction-based survival instinct has created for us, or we can consciously choose to create a different tomorrow using active thought.


When we plan our weekend off, we think about some of the possibilities, we "experience" them in our mind. This is creating the images in the time-tunnel. The ones we focus on and put most energy into will become the most vivid and eye-catching when we get there and our attention will be drawn to them - this process is re-enforced by our drive to prove ourselves right. Our conscious mind will do anything to be right. Even if you believe that your weekends never go the way that you plan them, your conscious mind will make "that" idea come true.

If someone has also painted "you" into "their" weekend imaginings, then at that point in time you will be faced with a choice.


You either "look at" your images and experience your dream, or you allow the other person to direct your experiences towards their dream. This doesn't have to be a bad thing (at least not every-time). The other person might have better dreams than you or may be better at making them come alive. However, if "your" dreams are not being represented in your experience, you are not living "your" life. The third option would obviously be to create your dreams together and to make sure that both people get to experience their own versions of the joint creation.


Neale uses the analogy of an ApplOrange to describe the time/space continuum and the time-tunnel as your path through the Apple (physical), Orange (spiritual) parts. Given that the tunnel in the Apple is lined with images (like an art gallery), I like to think of the ApplOrange as an Art Gallery and the tunnel as the route you take as you walk around it (that creates your pathway).


So, in the next part of this sequence, I'll have a "short" explanation of how life works when you consider it as taking place inside an Art Gallery.


John

Hey John

I have been reading all the posts and articles on this site, over the past three days and have enjoyed them. They contain many thoughts that make me stretch and need to be explored more. Others my gut tells me to discard and I usually try to go with my first impression rather my thought process.

Interestingly your thought on time is one that I want to throw but it does have a striking resemblance to my own thought on time.

I have never written down before so it may come out a little jumbled so I may come back and give it a rewrite. If you do not mind. But here it is in draft form.

Time does not exist in the spiritual world in either of the two forms that are referenced. It can not, for time to exist there must be physical properties. That is why the spiritual can be anywhere at anytime, that is why it can be said that God[What ever we take that to be] can be the first and last etc. etc. He lives / inhabits the spiritual heavens were physical laws including time have no hold or place.

While you state that all things are alive because they all contain the same atoms vibrating in their own frequency I wonder / I believe that the spiritual beings do not consist of these but of another incorporeal(a word I had to look up but actually works here)material, one we may not now or may never know.

In the end while our two worlds may interact we can never be apart of spiritual realm. Visit at times, maybe but never for long and never in our present form.

We are made physical and physical we will remain.

Yours with all faith and peace.

Carl

Hello Carl, thanks for taking the time to come to the site and read some of the messages here. I really appreciate it when people take the time to register and login and then post their own thoughts, so thanks again and please continue to play an active part in the discussion.

I don’t know anything about “you”, so this is a general statement and not aimed at you -These are not easy topics and for most people, they haven’t spend very much time actually thinking About what they Believe about God, Life, Death, Time, Space, etc. They have some instincts and then they have lots of conditioning from their culture. Many cultures don’t encourage people to question and explore alternative ideas. May be this is a good thing, to be told “How it is” by someone who “knows”. But how do they know and why are they telling us? Where did “their” knowledge, understanding and wisdom come from? They always say it came from “God” or Angels revealed it to them, but what does that mean? If we don’t accept their story, where did “our” doubts come from (The Devil?).

If “God” appears to one person and says one thing, then appears to another person and says a different thing, what is going on?

So, to get to your message – you appear to be saying that there is a difference between our physical “space/time” and the Spiritual “realm” and, that “God” occupies the Spiritual Realm, not bound by any of the physical laws of nature that we are limited by.

In this scenario, is God an individual entity or being and where do the Angels live (if they exist)? Is there a Devil and where is he?

You also state that “We are made physical and physical we will remain” – Are you saying that you don’t believe that we have a Spiritual component to our make-up? What about the idea of “Body, Mind and Soul” and that we are “Spiritual Beings having a Human Experience” – Made in Gods image and returning to Spirit when we are done here? I’m just asking – you don’t need to believe any of those ideas, but lots of people do.

Included in this message is “TRUTH”, so what is it? If I have an idea about truth and you have a different one, they can’t both be true, can they? We can say that they are true “for us”, in “our experience”, but what if we were “proven wrong”, then what?

Here are four questions to ask about any idea we have:
1. How do I know what I think I know?
2. What difference will knowing it make to me?
3. What difference will it make to the source of that idea (your mind, another person, a group, an angel, or God)?
4. What happens if it turns out to be wrong?
An example to ponder, from someone else:

Jesus is the only son of God, he died for our sins and he if the only route to God and eternal Salvation.

Mine -
All things are Alive, because everything has Consciousness, even individual atoms.
God is Consciousness and IT exists Everywhere, both in the Physical and Spiritual levels of existence.
Time and Space exist Everywhere that exists, even in Spiritual Realms, entities are just not “bound” by them to the same degree that we are.

How do I know these things – God told me through my Mind, Body and Soul
What difference does it make to me – I see All Life as One
What difference does it make to the Source of this knowledge (God) – none
What if it turns out to be wrong – No Problem, but it’s as big as I can be right now


John
(ps - I like the quote on the end of your message)