Andrew Cort's Blog, page 8

July 30, 2014

Gnosis Revisited

An Excerpt from The Geometry of the End Of Time: Proportion, Prophecy and Power, by Robert Lawlor



gnosisAccording to Gnostic beliefs, the greatest obstacle to the advancement of human consciousness has been conceptual and linguistic error: “Giving a name to the nameless.” It is due to this error that we find our society stretched over an abyss between an irreconcilable duality: Monotheism and Atheism, with no third term upon which dialogue or integration might occur.


Perhaps Gnosticism can fulfill that bridging role.


The three dominant monotheisms which originated with and presently bind Western civilization, all adopted dramaturgies with one very simple element: One God, having a specific name who actively intrudes in the social, political, sexual and military endeavors of human life. This specified and anthropomorphized “God” guides nations through the rise and fall of Empires as well as through the, not uncommon, plagues, famines and floods. In this way the deification earns devotion and fear in their constituency. Consistent in the three mid-Eastern European monotheisms the ultimate “God” communes through a historic figure, (rulers or military) who is instrumental in establishing an institutionalized church.


The Gnostics believed that collective narratives, such as those found in monotheism, as well as in its antithesis, atheistic secular scientism, distorts human thought and perception on all levels and can only direct the formation and goals towards corrupt and self-destructive conclusions. The following Gnostic verses address this very question and also speak to the human yearning for freedom from the millennia of warring monotheisms which continue to fracture the potential spiritual wholeness in humankind. The Gnosis is a deep intuitive sense of the presence of an unspeakable mystery beneath all knowing and all being.


Thou art alone the non-containable

And thou art alone the non-visible

Thou art alone the non-subsistent


– Gnostic hymn, preserved in Coptic


O thou beyond all things what else can it be meet to call thee?

How can speech praise thee? for thou art not expressible by any speech.

How can reason gather thee? for thou art not comprehensible by any mind.

Thou that art alone ineffable while thou engenderest all that is open to speech.

Thou that alone art unknowable while thou engenderest all that is open to thought….

End of all things art thou and one and all and none,

Not being one nor all, claiming all names how shall I call thee?


– Opening lines of a hymn by Gregorius the Theologian


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Published on July 30, 2014 09:46

July 29, 2014

The Underlying Unity of the Three Monotheistic Religions

allfaithsThe three Western monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are all grounded in ideals of faith, love, and moral rules of living, with each religion emphasizing one particular ideal.


Judaism emphasizes rules of living, which, if followed, would normalize our physical and social life on Earth, providing an environment that encourages the evolution of the soul.


Christianity emphasizes love — love of neighbor and love of God.


Islam emphasizes faith — “There is no God but God.”


But again, all three contain all three. It’s really all the same religion.



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SYMBOLS. MEANING, AND THE SACRED QUEST:
Spiritual Awakening in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Stories



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Published on July 29, 2014 10:08

July 28, 2014

Muslims Mark End of Ramadan With Eid Celebrations

eid-al-fitr-2014-famous-foods-around-world-break-fast-after-end-ramadanDUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Jul 28, 2014, 11:50 AM ET

By AYA BATRAWY Associated Press

Associated Press


Millions of Muslims across the world celebrated the first day of the Eid al-Fitr holiday Monday, which marks the end of the month long fast of Ramadan.


The three-day-long Eid al-Fitr holiday is a time to celebrate the completion of Ramadan, a month devoted to worship and repentance during which observing Muslims abstain from food and water from sunrise to sunset every day.


But the mood was dark for millions of people affected by the Syrian civil war, the Gaza war and the militant advance in Iraq. Many were just too busy trying to survive to observe the holiday.


Beyond the Middle East, the few remaining Muslims in the Central African Republic’s capital city ventured out to a mosque under the watchful guard of armed peacekeepers. Others like Aminata Bary stayed at home, still too fearful to venture out for fear of attack from Christian militias who drove thousands of Muslims from the capital this year.


(View the complete story here: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/muslims-mark-end-ramadan-eid-celebrations-24738271

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Published on July 28, 2014 19:49

The Power of Myth

mythWe have to stop reducing the vast meaning and awesome power of symbolism and mythology to mere questions of literal fact or fiction. Myths reflect back to us and teach us about our deepest psychological and spiritual truths. Among contemporary people, myths tend to be dismissed, inaccurately, as childish fantasies or the unscientific gropings of primitive minds. This is why followers of western religions have typically insisted that their scriptures are not myths at all, but must be taken as literally true. This, however, merely weakens the effectiveness and power of religions, rendering them spiritually useless, often rather foolish, as well as socially dangerous, rather than instructive and potentially even ennobling.

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SYMBOLS, MEANING, AND THE SACRED QUEST:
Spiritual Awakening in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Stories




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Published on July 28, 2014 14:59

Two Excesses to Avoid: No Rationality, Only Rationality

socratesThere are two excesses that must be avoided: to exclude rational scientific thinking, and to admit nothing but rational scientific thinking.


As science and philosophy continue to examine and unravel the mysteries of the relationship between the inner experiences of mind and the external events of matter, we stand in an ideal position to begin a fresh examination of the universe. But Reason finds itself still stymied by the stubborn refusal of ‘actual reality’ to reveal itself. As Plato knew, if one wishes to know actual Reality, reason has to give way. This has always been the stance of mystics, but it has also had adherents in western science. “Reason’s last step”, as famously noted by Blaise Pascal, “is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it. It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realize that.”


This quote is often misunderstood. The kind of realization that Pascal is referring to here is not ‘irrational’ or ‘anti-rational’. There is no question that many critics of science do argue from the tiresome and fatuous standpoint of irrationality, but Pascal is talking about something else, something that the West seems to keep forgetting: he is recognizing the possibility of reaching a higher form of thinking. He is talking about Nous.


Socrates knew that Eros (the Greek symbol for the passionate desire for everything Good, Beautiful and True) is required to lure Reason to its final extremity, where it recognizes its own limitations. Along the way, at its most productive, Reason accompanied by Eros is grounded in feelings of interest in the subject, feelings of devotion to truth, enjoyment in discovery, and an appreciation for beauty and mystery. But Reason without Eros, dried up of feeling and separated from any worthy aim, becomes preoccupied with pointless scurrying about, busily ripping apart the tapestry of life, analyzing all the pieces, classifying them, but unable to remember why or how to put them back together again.


All truly ground-breaking knowledge comes from noetic insight beyond reason. Old thought patterns dissolve and something new appears. Discursive reasoning, logic, experimentation and classification, can all help to prepare the ground for the soul to awaken and for insight to occur, but they do this by simply rearranging what is already known. Only erotic longing, in the real and fullest sense, can lead us beyond such circular processes and open up new possibilities of awareness. When we cherish this longing, remembering what it is and what it means for our lives, we see that Eros is the link between meaningless data and meaningful wisdom. All those subjects that teach the soul about meaning – philosophy, art, music, literature, religion – are enlivened and refreshed once again. They provide genuine, indispensable knowledge that is essential for the mature pursuit of science, a knowledge that carries far more ‘weight’ than mere technological knowledge. And then this technological knowledge gains a context of meaning and purpose that allows it to become, appropriately, the highly regarded servant, but not the master, of humanity.

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Published on July 28, 2014 09:59

July 27, 2014

What Makes a Human being Human

0rise2Human beings possess all the essential characteristics of minerals, plants, and animals. And yet, at the same time, we can also be open to levels of reality that transcend the visible world. This potential for holistic completeness is the quintessential human quality. This is what makes a human being human.

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Published on July 27, 2014 08:00

July 26, 2014

Israel’s best weapon against Hamas: Giving the Palestinians HOPE

By Peter Beinart (Haaretz, July 23rd)


peace symbolIt’s easy to criticize the Israeli government’s response to the rockets launched from Gaza in recent weeks. It’s harder to offer an alternative. But honest critics have an obligation to try. So here goes.


The short answer is that I’d treat the rockets as military symptoms of a political problem. That doesn’t mean Israel shouldn’t return fire. If Hamas and Islamic Jihad can attack Israel with impunity, they may never stop. But returning fire—or even invading Gaza—will never make Israel safe.


Israel can destroy Hamas’ rockets, but Hamas will eventually rebuild them bigger and better, as it did after the last war, and the one before that. And in the relatives and friends of the Palestinians killed in Operation Protective Edge, it will find plenty of new recruits willing to fire them. Israel can overthrow Hamas and then pull back, but it will leave in its wake Somalia-like chaos that gives groups even more radical than Hamas free reign. Israel can overthrow Hamas and try to install Fatah, but doing so will harm the latter as much as the former because any faction that rides into Gaza atop an Israeli tank will lose its public legitimacy forever. Israel can overthrow Hamas and try to govern Gaza itself, but that would require Israeli 18- year-olds to permanently patrol house-to-house in a territory where they’re constantly at risk of becoming the next Gilad Shalit.


So what would I do? First, I’d seek a cease-fire that eases those aspects of Israel’s blockade that have no legitimate security rationale. (That doesn’t mean acceding to Hamas’ cease-fire demands but it means recognizing that a cease-fire that does nothing to address the blockade – as Israel wants – won’t last).


Here are a couple of examples. Since 2010, Israel has made it easier for goods to enter Gaza. But it still makes it extremely difficult for goods to leave. According to the Israeli human rights group Gisha, only two percent as many truckloads leave the Strip as did in 2007. If Israel wants to check those trucks to ensure they’re not carrying weapons, fine. (Last December, the Netherlands tried to donate a high-tech scanner for exactly that purpose).


But essentially barring Gazan exports to Israel and the West Bank — historically Gaza’s biggest markets — is both inhumane and stupid. It’s helped destroy the independent business class that could have been a check on Hamas’ power, and left many in Gaza with the choice of working for Hamas or receiving food aid.


In addition to goods, Israel should make it easier for people to leave Gaza, too. A quarter of Gazans have family in the West Bank. Yet even before this war, Israel allowed Gazans to travel to the West Bank only in “exceptional humanitarian cases.” Yes, Israel can restrict the travel of terrorists. But preventing young Gazans from studying in the West Bank – like preventing Gazan businessmen from exporting there – is self-defeating and inhumane. It feeds the isolation and despair that Hamas exploits.


Second, I’d let Hamas take part in a Palestinian unity government that prepares the ground for Palestinian elections. That doesn’t mean tolerating Hamas attacks, to which Israel should always reserve the right to respond. But it means no longer trying to bar Hamas from political participation because of its noxious views.


It’s common to hear pro-Israel hawks ridicule Mahmoud Abbas for lacking authority over Gaza and for serving the 10th year of a four-year presidential term. But by opposing Palestinian elections, Israel creates the very circumstance its supporters bemoan. Without free elections — which means elections in which all major Palestinian parties can run — Palestinian leaders will never enjoy authority in both Gaza and the West Bank nor the legitimacy to make painful compromises on behalf of their people.


Israel wants Hamas barred from any Palestinian unity government, and any Palestinian election, until it accepts the two-state solution and past peace agreements. But as I’ve suggested before, the current Israeli government probably couldn’t meet those conditions.


There’s a better way. What’s crucial is not that Hamas as a party endorse the two-state solution. After all, Likud as a party has not endorsed the two state-solution, either. What’s crucial is that Hamas promise to respect a two-state agreement if endorsed by the Palestinian people in a referendum. In the past, Hamas leaders have told the media they would. Israel, or its Western allies, should get that pledge in writing, and, in return, allow the free elections necessary to produce a Palestinian leadership with the legitimacy to make a deal.


Finally, Israel should do everything it can — short of rigging the elections — to ensure that Hamas doesn’t win. Already, polls show that Abbas would defeat Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh easily. (If Israel really wanted to crush Hamas, it could release jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, who has strongly endorsed the two state solution, and who in polls defeats Haniyeh by an even larger margin). But Israel could also help ensure Hamas’ defeat by showing Palestinians that Abbas’ strategy of recognizing Israel, and helping it combat terrorism, actually works. It could do so by freezing settlement growth and publicly committing to a Palestinian state near the 1967 lines with a capital in East Jerusalem. That would give Abbas an instant boost.


Hamas’ great ally is despair. It grows stronger when Palestinians decide that settlement growth has made the two-state solution impossible. It gains strength when Palestinians decide that leaders like Abbas and Salam Fayyad are fools for helping Israel police the West Bank while getting only massive settlement subsidies in return.


Nothing would weaken Hamas more than growing Palestinian faith that through nonviolence and mutual recognition, they can win the basic rights they’ve been denied for almost half a century. Israel’s best long-term strategy against Palestinian violence is Palestinian hope. Unfortunately, as effective as Benjamin Netanyahu has been at destroying Palestinian rockets, he’s been even more effective at destroying that.


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THE AMERICAN PSYCHE IN SEARCH OF ITS SOUL





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Published on July 26, 2014 07:28

July 25, 2014

A Prayer for Peace by Rabbi Michael Lerner

“Our Father and Mother energies in the cosmos:


peace“Bless all the peoples of the Middle East with peace, security, environment sanity, and a sense of being genuinely cared for by the world and by the God/dess of all flesh, however they conceive of this God or Goddess, whatever names or language they give to the ULTIMATE SOURCE OF LOVE AND MEANING IN THE UNIVERSE.


“In this hour of war, violence, and pain, we reaffirm the humanity and decency of all the people on our planet, and our ability to see the humanity and God-presence in the Palestinian people, the Israeli people, and all people on the planet.


“We understand that each of the many sides of the conflicts tearing our world apart today have their own legitimacy, but we also know that violence cannot be the path to a peaceful and safe world. We may be outraged at the behavior of governments, political parties, or groups acting in hurtful ways, but we will not accept any attempt to generalize that righteous indignation into generalities about all people of a certain nation, race, religion, sexual orientation, or any other such grouping.


“We ask YOU, the Force of Healing and Transformation in the Universe, Yud Hey Vav Hey, ALLAH, the Cosmic Christ, Krishna, whatever name people give to this Force, to open up the hearts of all humanity to each other and to the earth itself. Let us quickly see a new consciousness permeating the human race, a consciousness which recognizes that peace and “homeland security” can never be achieved through strategies based on domination and “power over” others, but only through a strategy of genuine love, caring, kindness, and generosity toward others.


“As Spiritual Progressives, we will do our best to practice that openheartedness, love and generosity, toward the Palestinian people, our brothers and sisters in the Middle East, and toward the Israeli people, even while still retaining our critical consciousness enough to wish that each side would stop being hurtful toward the other and would adopt the New Bottom Line of love, kindness, caring for each other and the planet, that provides the only sustainable path for us and all peoples on the planet.


“We know that peace can only be sustainably achieved when the world is reorganized along principles of social justice, caring for each other and caring for the planet Earth–and so we will commit to putting our energies into that task. Give us the strength and wisdom to know how to heal the many hurts of people who have responded to their own pain by acting in painful ways toward others. Give us the capacity to show empathy and to learn how heal the wounds, not only of the oppressed, but also the wounds that distort the behaviors and generate the fears that are the basis of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and every other form of distorted consciousness. And give us the humility to recognize our own blind spots and the courage to work to heal ourselves even as we seek to heal others!


“Precisely at this moment, we refuse to be realistic, but instead recognize YOU and your presence in our lives as an incitement to put our energies and money behind our highest values—love, kindness, generosity, ethical and environmental sustainability, and awe/wonder/and radical amazement at the grandeur and mystery of the universe. It is from this standpoint, rooted in our Torah and in our tradition for some, for the Qur’an or the New Testament for others, and for many other spiritual sources, that we affirm that love and kindness will triumph on our planet, and we will do our part to make that actually happen. In so acting, we will become Your partners in Tikkun Olam—the healing and repair of the world.”


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Written for Tikkun magazine www.tikkun.org, Beyt Tikkun and the interfaith and secular-humanist welcoming Network of Spiritual Progressives by Rabbi Michael Lerner.


Please circulate this to everyone you know, post it on your Facebook and other social media and your website, and ask everyone you know to join and support our Network of Spiritual Progressives by going to its website and joining at www.spiritualprogressives.org.


RabbiLerner.tikkun@gmail.com

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THE DOOR IS OPEN

(The 7 Steps of Spiritual Awakening That Western Mythology and Scripture Have Been Trying to Tell Us All Along)




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Published on July 25, 2014 06:23

July 24, 2014

Leave the “Auschwitz Selfie” Girl Alone

auschwitz selfieThis child should be left alone. I remember on the morning of September 11, 2001, I was teaching in a private school and all the kids and staff were together watching the terrible story unfolding on TV. A couple of young girls were ignoring the television, and were talking and giggling together. My first impulse was to feel angry, and to tell them to stop talking and be more respectful. But then I realized that these kids were precisely WHY the horror we were witnessing had to be stopped. The whole reason is so that young kids like these can feel safe, and can laugh, and have fun, and enjoy their lives and their friendships. They will have plenty of time to be adults dealing with responsibilities and tragedies. The girl in this photo was commemorating an important moment in her life, and remembering the father she lost. She took a picture, and as we are always told to to do when we take a picture, she smiled. She was not going out of her way to be disrespectful. And we shouldn’t be disrespectful toward her. The ‘adults’ (and I use the word very, very reluctantly) who have tweeted unkind things to her or about her should hang their heads in shame.



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Published on July 24, 2014 05:59

July 23, 2014

Jews, Nazis, and Albanian Muslims

peaceWe are all familiar with the stories of ‘righteous gentiles’, the many noble and courageous Christians who risked, and sometimes lost, their lives, helping to save European Jews from the Holocaust. But here is a story you might not know: During the Nazi occupation, entire Muslim villages in the small country of Albania sheltered Jews. During the previous years, as German Jews scrambled to get visas to escape the coming nightmare, country after country turned them away. Even the United States had a “quota” for Jews, and turned away thousands. But the Albanian Embassy granted visas without question.


There was no concept of “stranger” in Albanian culture. For the Muslims of Albania, a “Foreigner” was a “Guest”, and they were treated with the same hospitality as the three angels who visited Abraham.


The Albanian Prime Minister, Mehdi Frasheri, even issued a secret order to his fellow Muslims, defying the Nazi occupiers, that read: “All Jewish children will sleep with your children, all will eat the same food, all will live as one family.”


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Published on July 23, 2014 05:29