there's this thing called "The Way"

[_wayfarer]

perhaps it's no surprise that I might talk about this topic.

Maybe I should be writing this in my blog. But I'm kind of in a pensive mood. and just throwing words out there.

i"ve spent the better part of 20 years in my 25 year Nom/Middle Way journey (i didn't know about the Nom term until about a year ago), engaged, maybe even obsessed about 'the way'.

the way. the way things work. the way that a snowflake exhibits order from the underlying capability of hydroxyl molecules forming weak bonds at specific angles. The way a stream flows. the way humans interact.

observing the way requires stillness. It's not mystical mumbojumbo here. it's simply that there are laws, but not 'laws' per se, but rather, tendencies that dictate how things work. The laws or tendencies are not a thing. they're not god. they're not a force. they simply are. and so subtle...like water... water goes to the lowest point, and because of this simple tendency, water can create canyons greater than the mind can fathom.

There were some ancients who got it right... laotzu. chuangtzu. and maybe some people today that have a notion that there is a way things work.

I got five copies of the following this christmas for my five daughters: Burton Watson's Chuang Tzu, Cleary's Wen Tzu, and "The god who weeps".

I have an impression that Joseph Smith was intimately aware of the way things work. He manipulated things to his advantage at times....which can be done, but the moment that we 'manipulate', we are no longer on 'the way', but rather, we are doing our thing.

I cannot translate this accurately for you: dao ke dao fei chang dao. But here is a shot. "The way that we can follow is by no means a fixed way.: it's line one of the Tao Te Ching, the most translated text in the world outside of the Bible. There is an ancient text, the Yi Jing (I Ching), which I would venture to say that very few people 'get'. yet the 'yi' is a model about change. Things happen. Poop happens. Why? because it does. But then, what is our reaction to poop? And that...is the way.

So when DCP spews forth is bile toward those who deign to differ with his fawning sycophants... what is the result? Physics. Ah yes.... how things work in the 'physic'al sciences.... For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction... DCP's hubris creates nemesis. It's an ancient play...played out forever.

I have come to understand that "the way" is the power of god. but here's the kicker: its a power without the 'god' behind it. God is completely subordinate to the Way. In fact, the term 'god' is completely meaningless, except that a 'being' -- uh...one of us... is in a moment in harmony with the way. "Being one with the Way"...that is a god to me. it's an ephemeral state that we all achieve in a moment, and no-one, but no-one holds onto it...

Ye are gods, and all of ye are children of God most high...yet ye shall die like men...(Psalms 82, also quoted in John 10).

Now here is something interesting.... there was this jewish dude....influenced by sages from 'the east'...that realized that 'god', that is "YHWH" resided within us. He's handed the TANAKH scroll one day and reads, "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek..." Then the dude sits down. He says, simply, "This day has this scripture been fulfilled in your ears." He was trying to tell his synagogue something...that the reality of god is US, our non-conscious selves. The God within... The Holy Spirit... The Divine Nature... It's the only god with whom we have to do... It's the same YHWH who says to moses, "Tell them that 'I AM' hath sent you.". "Be still and know that I am god" -- something to be recited by an individual.

This dude in (well it wasn't nazareth, because that city didn't exist) was saying that you guys don't get it... the god, the very god of all creation... is US... The god that recited to MOses was Moses own non-conscious self...that's what "I Am that I am meant!

I don't believe in anything supernatural in the least...certainly not the puppetmaster god of the creeds. But the god... the wondrous god that exists within us that is in harmony with the Way...That's the god that's always been there, that revealed to me wonders on my mission and beyond. This is a god that is real, tangible, and relevant. not some patent BS god that's going to zing me for some alleged sins somewehre. If i sin, then the way I choose leads to death -- that's all. No guilt, just consequence for evil action.

The mopologists hate Paul Tillich, but Tillich got some of this right and wrong at the same time: God is not some puppetmaster, but the ground of being....and this fits nicely with 'the way', except the way has no consciousness. it only is the tendencies which govern consciousness.

So in this rant, I've just spewed forth what I really think. Let the mopologists have their day condemning me for being unorthodox and heretic. I say that Joseph Smith was on trajectory here. He just was caught up in his own religious superstitions, and none that followed were willing to realize where he was going.

this thing called 'the way' sometimes can me 'karma'...what goes around comes around...so there! my mopologist friends...

[_cwald]

I concur with your post wayfarer.

[_Gadianton]

Hi wayfarer,

I think you've got a pretty good interpretation of Mormonism there, and if it works for you, I think that's great. It's a little known fact that the apologists have for the most part abandoned the LDS teachings on deification. There are two reasons for this:

1) It's outright embarrassing to have to admit to one's academic friends that a Mormon man believes one day he'll be a God creating worlds without end, and populating them with his literal seed; and even holding open the possibility that the populating may involve multiple spouses.
2) Since everyone believed in multiple gods thousands of years ago, there is a tactical advantage to say, "hey look, they believed in many gods in the Old Testament too!" Mormonism can then be sort of "scholarly".

Of course, this reworks the whole belief system. In the apologist version, becoming a God is like becoming a serf, so it sounds a lot less cultish. But it throws a huge belief of the Chapel under a bus. Well, maybe it's still compatible? After all, the apologists aren't being disciplined for the idea. So I think you have a huge opportunity here to work a Tao-based interpretation into Mormonism, and Mormon Studies can be a great vehicle for this. The difference between the Tao integrated belief about "gods" and the apologist interpretation is less than the apologist interpretation and the Chapel Mormon doctrine.

[_lulu]

I was teaching World Civ I one day. There were any number of Hispanic Roman Catholic students and just a few Egyptian Copts. The Copts were sure God was within, the Catholics that God was with out.

East meets West.

[_Nightlion]

No way.
It's loonier than evolution.
Allowing youself the freedom to be amenable to nothing is nothing.
What you love about it is that skeptics have NOTHING to criticize and therefore you float your boat. You got to believe in something to be skeptical of it. Believing in nothing makes you invisible.

Congrats on your nothing from nothing.

Try to explain to me how it was that you got a revelation from nothing? You must have meant your own insight rather than a revelation. A revelation is something/one somehow telling you something you would not have noticed otherwise.

[_wayfarer]

No way.
It's loonier than evolution.
Allowing youself the freedom to be amenable to nothing is nothing.
What you love about it is that skeptics have NOTHING to criticize and therefore you float your boat. You got to believe in something to be skeptical of it. Believing in nothing makes you invisible.

Congrats on your nothing from nothing.

Try to explain to me how it was that you got a revelation from nothing? You must have meant your own insight rather than a revelation. A revelation is something/one somehow telling you something you would not have noticed otherwise.

I'm pretty sure I was under the influence of something when I wrote what I wrote above, but now you're convincing me that I need to be under the influence to capture what you just said.... no offense, but I'm not sure I follow you.

[_wayfarer]

I was teaching World Civ I one day. There were any number of Hispanic Roman Catholic students and just a few Egyptian Copts. The Copts were sure God was within, the Catholics that God was with out.

East meets West.

from a morthodox point of view, There's the god completely without (HF), Jesus Christ -- somewhere in the middle, and then the Holy Ghost, the god within. Seriously.

HF provides us a 'divine nature'. Jesus Christ is the 'head of the church, but all sorts of other things, icnluding the 'light of christ', our conscience, which lies within. So that's why I put christ more or less in the Middle. ;-) as for the holy ghost, this is clearly the 'god within'.

[_Nightlion]

No way.
It's loonier than evolution.
Allowing youself the freedom to be amenable to nothing is nothing.
What you love about it is that skeptics have NOTHING to criticize and therefore you float your boat. You got to believe in something to be skeptical of it. Believing in nothing makes you invisible.

Congrats on your nothing from nothing.

Try to explain to me how it was that you got a revelation from nothing? You must have meant your own insight rather than a revelation. A revelation is something/one somehow telling you something you would not have noticed otherwise.

I'm pretty sure I was under the influence of something when I wrote what I wrote above, but now you're convincing me that I need to be under the influence to capture what you just said.... no offense, but I'm not sure I follow you.

I said you want to live in La La Land.

The entire art of the Tao is to be above reproach in your thoughts.........{read}.... say nothing but sound like you are saying everything.

[_wayfarer]

I said you want to live in La La Land.

The entire art of the Tao is to be above reproach in your thoughts.........{read}.... say nothing but sound like you are saying everything.

huh? Have you read laozi? zhuangzi? above reproach in one's thoughts? where did you get this? dao is about ziran/naturalness, self-so. In reading zhuangzi, the shengren is never 'above reproach' -- but rather a fool, an uncarved block. the spontaneous, unconstrained self. The infant with an erection (it's in the texts). It's about being truly and authentically yourself, natural, unpretentious, and never, never, above reproach. "That's why the sage wears course clothes, while holding jade in his bosom." The daoist sage (shengren) doesn't give a flying fidaddle as to what others think.

Please just bear in mind that a am fluent in the original language of the texts and have lived in asia for years following this wacked out journey I've been on.

bringing this back to Mormonism, Joseph Smith proposed in section 88 two things: (1) that the power of god is everywhere, and used terminology that equated the power of god with what the chinese would call 'dao'. (2) that all beings, including god, are subject to these natural laws. This places an interesting supremacy on the power of god being before god. In other words, whatever a god may be, a god is subordinate to natural law (either a lesser or greater law, as Joseph Smith put it).

Now to the ontology of a Mormon god. If the power of god is eternal, unchanging, and ubiquitous, then 'a god' is simply a being who is 'at one' with that power. The role of 'god of this world' is not the 'first cause' of the world, but rather a 'calling', like 'the prophet' or 'the bishop'. 'the god' is simply the being who happens to be on the throne of the godhead. While this is not 'Mormon doctrine', it constructs at least a model of 'Mormon god ontology' that doesn't involve infinite regress.

Now let me go one step further. Why is the being of god something necessary for creation? Cannot the properties of this world be emergent rather than designed? Is not the process of evolution simply a mechanism of emergence over a very long time? And according to Peerenboom, who wrote an excellent work on Huang Lao natural law constructs, the emergence of order is a function of dao -- even the emergence of a god is a function of the requirement for us to believe that there is a god.

I have also spent a lot of time studying the nonconscious mind, as the guanzi/neiye puts it, the mind within a mind. This remarkable text lays out the idea that we have a separate mind, the daoist 'shengren' within us all the time. In psychological terms, this separate entity, our non-consciousness, is not controlled by our consciousness, but somehow makes its own decisions independently of our conscious mind. You say that revelation only comes from our own insight? we have within our minds a set of programming engineered into us through millions of years of evolution. Our minds -- particularly our non-conscious minds are much more than us. I don't have time for the details, but you'll find a lot of it on my blog, listed below.

We might call this, 'the holy ghost' as well. There really is no difference in concept. And you know? The holy ghost is "god", and if it resides within us, and reveals to us truth, then, yes, the truth does come from within us.

[_zeezrom]

wayfarer,

Have you yet considered becoming a Bhikkhu?

It appears you very much appreciate their ways and thence might do well to join them. That would be pretty rad.

Zee.