We are not given to understand. Katerina Korin

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СКАЧАТЬ my illness, all these years, I have been coping with life only in connection with God. He makes sense even of the most difficult days and gives lots of hope. The more so His help. This is the real miracle! And I believe that miracles happen to everyone, I just can see them, because a body part of mine (it’s not clear which one) is set to catch signs and notice miracles. It might be intuition. But these signs help me live. That’s for sure.

      For me, God is alive. And I believe in a personal God.

      The Shape of God

      In every religion, the existence of God takes its own form. The word «form’ is very important. The fact is that it does not necessarily stand for the material form, it is also a spiritual form. God exists in a form that can be understood by people. This is my concept. And at this point, I do not see alternatives to it. My mind is also part of our system that describes the world, so I cannot say that my concept is absolutely correct, because it still exists within the given form. Of course, the truth can be completely different, incommunicable, unknowable. But for myself, in my mind, everything I do and think corresponds with my concept. It makes my life easier. And what is it really like?

      The peculiarity of Christianity is that God is separated from a man. A father and his sons and daughters. We stand apart from God. He acts as a person in this world. And in this world, this concept is normal. It has the right to exist. God is separate from a man. On the other hand, He is actually separate, because He is a «non-emptiness’, and we do not feel like that. A man is separated from the «non-emptiness’.

      God is not existence, neither it is goodness, God becomes visible in creation. God manifests Himself in creation. This is how He manifests Himself and becomes visible. Thus, a small part of Him becomes visible in creation, in the material world. But what He is like, what He is, we cannot say.

      God can be approached through ecstasy in prayer, liturgy, and other sacraments of religious service. Anyway, we have no other way. But it is crucial that we constantly try to approach God. If you are lucky, you will succeed a little. Therefore, the word «approach’ is used for this process, that means approximately, partially become closer.

      Surely we cannot get into a better contact with God, at least in our life, in our material world. Maybe in another world, in another spiritual dimension, we will do it? Having overcome the wheel of samsara, let’s say, unite with Him again. People are looking for different ways to feel the approach: through prayer, ecstasy, LSD, yoga. We are trying to get closer all the time. This desire is naturally inherent in us.

      And for me, Christianity is not a philosophy, it is a process of communication with the living God. Many perceive Christianity as a religion, as a certain code. In fact, true Christianity has no rules at all. It may simply be in a person’s soul. That is, you can be a Christian without observing any rules. If you are a Christian in your heart, then you are fundamentally Christian.

      «Every soul is a Christian’, said Quintus Tertullian, one of the outstanding early Christian writers and theologians, hundreds of years ago. In the emerging theology, Tertullian first expressed the doctrine of the Trinity. He laid the foundation for Latin patristics and Church Latin – the language of medieval Western ideas.

      Apparently, not every soul is a Christian, but in essence, yes, the words are true. The soul is a Christian in its striving for God, in its desire to help others. It is only important that these impulses, these movements, be sincere.

      In terms of soul, Orthodoxy is closer to me than other Christianity. It is the most mystical religion, closer even to Buddhism and Judaism than to Catholicism or Protestantism. Of course, it is very canonical, everything in it is according to the rules. Christian mystics say that God is one and only, and there are no material things or events. Exactly what Buddhism tells us about. Subject and object are not different, they are the same.

      In Buddhism, man is God. He also exists, He is also there. There is the God, and there is a man. I tend to support this idea – God and man are one. Everything is one, because everything is interconnected. Is a man separated from this one unity? From the world? From the universe? Of course not. He is right there. He cannot be separated. He is also God, only a small one, a very simple one. But he is also God. I believe that this «non-emptiness’ applies to absolutely everything. That is why it all links together when we try to explain synchronicities. We understand them as something that we ourselves create.

      We ourselves create these synchronicities by coming into contact with «non-emptiness’. We create all these signs ourselves, therefore they do not show up to people who do not believe in them. Because when we believe in something, we create it by the power of faith. Atheists essentially never wonder: «What is the world?» Surprisingly enough, they are not interested in the world and the way it works. They evade this question. They pretend that the question does not exist at all. But it does. People ask it every day. We live on a beautiful planet without asking ourselves how our planet was formed. In my opinion, atheism equals laziness. It represents the reluctance and fear, among other things, to try to find answers to your questions. This is scary. Atheists are afraid to know the truth, even to come closer to this truth. I feel sorry for atheists – they don’t ask themselves questions because they’re afraid of answers. After all, no one knows for sure what the truth is. And the process of searching is eternal. We will never answer all our questions, because it is simply not an option. But I am sad to realize that there are atheists who lock themselves only in the material world.

      God’s Names

      There is a God, and He appears in many different forms and faces. We see only our world – one of the billions of faces. We do not see the rest, because we are not ready for the rest. It’s like the many names of God in Judaism. My respect for Judaism has grown stronger, because it goes deeper. Different names of God are a good idea. Of course, Judaism speaks a worldly language, and speaking of different names for God, it means different incarnations of God, different religions – Christianity, Islam, and so on. But when I say «names of God’, I want to go even deeper. God can have names that we don’t even have an idea of. He can embody a completely different way of living. Moreover, God is unknowable, He has no name. Therefore, in Hinduism, it is forbidden to call God by name. There is neither a word nor a thought to express the God’s name. It is an amazing concept that God cannot even be thought of. God is described in negation, through enumeration of what He is not. There is even such a thing as negative theology. There is no need to think about God, for He is unknowable anyway. What a deep thought we have here. Thuswise we are reminded that God is the unknowable. And there is no point even trying to know Him. No one, of course, says that it is impossible to know Him. It is not prohibited. Still, it is impossible to know Him truly. Only the path of knowledge, like mine, is possible – but look, Hinduism warns me and other seekers that our search will get us nowhere. At least in this lifetime.

      Different Religions

      In every duality there is a hidden reserve. We operate on a binary system. Zeros and ones is a programming language. Computer technologies are built on zeroes and ones, on duality. That is, one thing is «yes’, the other thing is «no’. We certainly live in duality, we live in a binary system. All our actions and events exist in the binary system: black and white, good and evil, God and devil, up and down. Buddhism has is an absolutely categorical concept – duality is always one and endowed with hidden qualities, like two sides of the same coin.

      Until recently, I had the impression that Christianity was beautiful, its parables were wise and wonderful. If I go deeper into Zen Buddhism, what do I do with Christianity? As if you can only choose СКАЧАТЬ