Paul Chek, the Director's Cut

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
61

Yall are having this pissing contest as to which religion is better…That’s not the point. Paul is saying that his beliefs are better and that all others are worse. For that I call him out as an asshole. I don’t care if he worships carpet, but don’t go around saying everybody else is wrong, stupid, or immature.

I don’t have a problem with buddism, hinduism, or wicca; “new age” is just a rip off of wicca by the way.

He doesn’t understand religion at all and yet he is being all deep and philosophical while simultaneously not knowing what the fuck he is talking about. It seems it’s all very new to him.

I would like to see him have the balls to defend his assertions.

And holistic medicine is a load of horse shit. I have known people who’ve tried it and it didn’t do shit. If I have tumor, I am getting surgery and ass load of drugs to take care of it. I’ll take care of my mind, the doctors can take care of the disease.

62

Seems they dropped there Tao.

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=8&threadID=194765

There’s more examples but you get the point. I am not trying to bash Buddhism, I have nothing against it. The assertion is no matter what the belief system, where there are people you’re going to have violence and war.

63

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]sbr wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]jwillow wrote:

[quote]katzenjammer wrote:

[quote]Raided wrote:
I like the term adult religion there is something very childish about saying “if you don’t believe what we believe then you’re not going to heaven”.
[/quote]
Why? The cosmos owes you nothing, my good man. What’s truly childish is saying “I can do and believe whatever I like and, by golly, I’ll still go to heaven!”[/quote]
Perhaps what’s truly childish is believing in heaven.

Stranger in a Strange Land popularized the phrase “Thou art God” some 40 years ago.

In a letter to his editor in 1960, Robert Heinlein explained and summarized what he had intended that phrase to convey:

That pantheistic, mystical “Thou art God!” chorus that runs through the book is not offered as a creed, but as an existentialist assumption of personal responsibility, devoid of all godding. It says, "Don’t appeal for mercy to God the Father up in the sky, little man, because he’s not at home and never was at home, and couldn’t care less. What you do with yourself, whether you are happy or unhappy - live or die - is strictly your business and the universe doesn’t care. In fact, you may be the universe and the only cause for your troubles. But, at best, the most you can hope for is comradeship with comrades no more divine (or just as divine) as you are. So quit sniveling and face up to it - “Thou art God!”[/quote]

…and it is this that scares most believers shitless…
[/quote]

Evidence?[/quote]

Ofcourse, why would you believe anything without evidence.[/quote]

Well played Sir, well played.

[/quote]

lol.

64

[quote]pat wrote:
I would like to see him have the balls to defend his assertions.
[/quote]
He hath spoken but once. For now, that is all that’s needed.

65

[quote]sbr wrote:
Ofcourse, why would you believe anything without evidence.[/quote]

Because we have no choice; and neither do you.

66

[quote]Gregus wrote:

[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
non-dualistic.

OR this sort of thing: [quote]"Ideas always create limitation – or division, because for every “is,” there must be an “isn’t.” [/quote]

Presumably, here^^ he is exempting his own “ideas”? Including this ^^ particular one? LOL.

Historically he’s off his rocker: if the 20th century saw the dissolution of monotheistic religions - and monotheistic religions are responsible for war - why was the 20th century the bloodiest in human history?

Have the nations of the world that practice the so-called “nondualistic” religions been free of human pain, suffering, cruelty, warfare? What a hoax.

[/quote]

Yes but how may Buddists attacked other Buddists and raper their women? How about Tibetans, how may time did Tibetans attack others and take their plunder and rape their women?
[/quote]

If you think violence, suffering, cruelty and war are the province solely of “Christian” countries, I don’t quite know what to say except that you have a lot of reading to do; you might start with a newspaper. Those are those big white sheets with black writing on them, folded a few ways for ease of use. They can be quite informative.

67

Though I’ve heard of Paul Chek I’ve never gotten to far into any of his ideologies on any topic. However, I must say, I agree with the basic points he is making.

Remember, there was a time when the Greeks and Romans worshiped Zeus and Apollo among many others. Along came other religions founded on more sensible notions. What Paul Chek is talking about is IMO the next evolution of this concept, one that links the body and mind, that people who are in tune with both can feel. Believe it or not, there will come a time when the majority of people on earth will laugh at the idea that half the events in the Bible actually occurred. Its obvious the bulk of the Old Testament was Jewish Law and it or the new testaments applicability to this day and age are laughable.

Oh and religious nuts? I won’t be back for awhile to comment because I am going to be on a boat soon and am praying to Poseidon for safe passage.

68

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]katzenjammer wrote:

[quote]Raided wrote:
I like the term adult religion there is something very childish about saying “if you don’t believe what we believe then you’re not going to heaven”.

[/quote]

Why? The cosmos owes you nothing, my good man. What’s truly childish is saying “I can do and believe whatever I like and, by golly, I’ll still go to heaven!”

New Ageism is a narcissistic, self-absorbed, pseudo philosophy/“religion.” It is only about attempting to deify the self, to turn yourself into a little god. It’s just the sort of philosophy that would appeal to a guy who talks ecstatically about his own fecal matter.

[/quote]

Well then it is probably much more reaslistic than most religions because we probably are as godlike as any creature we are likely to encounter so exploring our own potential is all there is.

I would not necessarily equate the childlike wish for an all knowing and perhaps all loving creator with maturity and the phantasy to live forever in an afterlife and to be united with an all powerful figure is as narcissistic as it gets.

[/quote]

“Heaven offers nothing that a mercenary soul can desire.” ~ C.S. Lewis

69

[quote]katzenjammer wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:
I would like to see him have the balls to defend his assertions.
[/quote]
He hath spoken but once. For now, that is all that’s needed.

[/quote]

Confucius say sitting in crap taking position, with bald head opens mind like a river delta.

70

[quote]sbr wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]jwillow wrote:

[quote]katzenjammer wrote:

[quote]Raided wrote:
I like the term adult religion there is something very childish about saying “if you don’t believe what we believe then you’re not going to heaven”.
[/quote]
Why? The cosmos owes you nothing, my good man. What’s truly childish is saying “I can do and believe whatever I like and, by golly, I’ll still go to heaven!”[/quote]
Perhaps what’s truly childish is believing in heaven.

Stranger in a Strange Land popularized the phrase “Thou art God” some 40 years ago.

In a letter to his editor in 1960, Robert Heinlein explained and summarized what he had intended that phrase to convey:

That pantheistic, mystical “Thou art God!” chorus that runs through the book is not offered as a creed, but as an existentialist assumption of personal responsibility, devoid of all godding. It says, "Don’t appeal for mercy to God the Father up in the sky, little man, because he’s not at home and never was at home, and couldn’t care less. What you do with yourself, whether you are happy or unhappy - live or die - is strictly your business and the universe doesn’t care. In fact, you may be the universe and the only cause for your troubles. But, at best, the most you can hope for is comradeship with comrades no more divine (or just as divine) as you are. So quit sniveling and face up to it - “Thou art God!”[/quote]

…and it is this that scares most believers shitless…
[/quote]

Evidence?[/quote]

Ofcourse, why would you believe anything without evidence.[/quote]

Good point.Ya gotta be able to back your shit up. If you don’t know why you believe what you believe, you may be wrong.

71

Paul Chek has some good ideas on training, however as soon as he elevated himself to guru status he lost me. He should stick to what he knows and that is not the spiritual, but the physical.

But he is right about one thing, people in industrialized nations are leaving Christianity and those in underdeveloped nations are moving toward Christianity. But, it’s because when people have everything as we do in the US we begin to drift away from everything spiritual. However, we don’t stop worshipping, we’ve just stopped worshipping God and now worship pop culture, a better body, sex, money, science, etc. We have too much, far too much, but that may change in the near future.

72

[quote]sbr wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]jwillow wrote:

[quote]katzenjammer wrote:

[quote]Raided wrote:
I like the term adult religion there is something very childish about saying “if you don’t believe what we believe then you’re not going to heaven”.
[/quote]
Why? The cosmos owes you nothing, my good man. What’s truly childish is saying “I can do and believe whatever I like and, by golly, I’ll still go to heaven!”[/quote]
Perhaps what’s truly childish is believing in heaven.

Stranger in a Strange Land popularized the phrase “Thou art God” some 40 years ago.

In a letter to his editor in 1960, Robert Heinlein explained and summarized what he had intended that phrase to convey:

That pantheistic, mystical “Thou art God!” chorus that runs through the book is not offered as a creed, but as an existentialist assumption of personal responsibility, devoid of all godding. It says, "Don’t appeal for mercy to God the Father up in the sky, little man, because he’s not at home and never was at home, and couldn’t care less. What you do with yourself, whether you are happy or unhappy - live or die - is strictly your business and the universe doesn’t care. In fact, you may be the universe and the only cause for your troubles. But, at best, the most you can hope for is comradeship with comrades no more divine (or just as divine) as you are. So quit sniveling and face up to it - “Thou art God!”[/quote]

…and it is this that scares most believers shitless…
[/quote]

Evidence?[/quote]

Ofcourse, why would you believe anything without evidence.[/quote]

Well, he is not talking about a religion. He is talking about people, and a blanket statement like that on these forums needs to be backed up with facts or at the minimum logic.

73

I lurk about in these forums all the time, but I never post. Usually, the posts are all but unreadable due to the horrible grammar and spelling. Not this time. Apparently religious shit-flinging fights really bring out the intellectuals. Bravo!

74

[quote]katzenjammer wrote:

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]katzenjammer wrote:

[quote]Raided wrote:
I like the term adult religion there is something very childish about saying “if you don’t believe what we believe then you’re not going to heaven”.

[/quote]

Why? The cosmos owes you nothing, my good man. What’s truly childish is saying “I can do and believe whatever I like and, by golly, I’ll still go to heaven!”

New Ageism is a narcissistic, self-absorbed, pseudo philosophy/“religion.” It is only about attempting to deify the self, to turn yourself into a little god. It’s just the sort of philosophy that would appeal to a guy who talks ecstatically about his own fecal matter.

[/quote]

Well then it is probably much more reaslistic than most religions because we probably are as godlike as any creature we are likely to encounter so exploring our own potential is all there is.

I would not necessarily equate the childlike wish for an all knowing and perhaps all loving creator with maturity and the phantasy to live forever in an afterlife and to be united with an all powerful figure is as narcissistic as it gets.

[/quote]

“Heaven offers nothing that a mercenary soul can desire.” ~ C.S. Lewis

[/quote]

It also holds nothing that any other soul could desire in much the same way as Santa Clause wont come down your chimney either.

75

[quote]ZEB wrote:
But he is right about one thing, people in industrialized nations are leaving Christianity and those in underdeveloped nations are moving toward Christianity. But, it’s because when people have everything as we do in the US we begin to drift away from everything spiritual. However, we don’t stop worshipping, we’ve just stopped worshipping God and now worship pop culture, a better body, sex, money, science, etc. We have too much, far too much, but that may change in the near future. [/quote]

I totally disagree. Who worships pop-culture? Or money? Or science? That’s just the holier-than-thou attitude that assumes everyone is hard-wired like you, and if you feel like you gotta worship something, everyone else must.

Some people are comfortable not “Knowing” all the answers that religion claims to give us. More people probably just don’t care or take the time to think about it. If you live in a third-world country and life sucks, everyday is a struggle, you’re much more likely to reach out and feel the need for a divine order and a god with a master plan to make you feel good.

When people’s lives are stable, they just tend to think less about things in those terms, and instead become more materialistic, and less mystic. That doesn’t mean they become less spiritual, it just means it takes on a different form, and a lot of the modern pop-culture conflict has to do with what form that takes. Yeah, I live in the 21st century, in the most technologically advanced society on earth, I’m not wondering why hurricanes and earthquakes kill people, and looking to a godhead to give me an answer. I’m okay with the idea that bad shit can happen without there being a “reason” or plan for it. That doesn’t make it more benign, it’s still bad shit. And the areas left without explanation; our metaphysics: the mysteries of quantum mechanics, creation theory, the existence of the soul, don’t really play into the day to day of our lives. We no longer need a complex metaphysical explanation to make-sense of the world around us.

76

[quote]Spartiates wrote:
Mr. Chek seems to be doing a little bit of religion/philosophy conflation, and appears to be coming down on the side that philosophy is better. That’s not to say that most religions don’t also have an associated philosophy, but you can have philosophy without religion: Taoism for example, is not a religion as it makes to attempt to describe the origins of the universe, and doesn’t give us a metaphysics. It’s merely prescriptive. Philosophy is more palatable, as there are fewer absolutes, and there is a more liquid transition from one to another. Religion, on the other-hand describes metaphysics and gives us a story or mythology about how it all began and why things are the way they are. You either buy into the story, or you don’t. If you kind of buy it, you’re just half-assing and lying to yourself. Agreeing with much of Christian philosophy, doesn’t make you a Christian. While different groups of Christians might disagree about what exactly makes one a Christian, the adhering to the precepts of the Nicene Creed is a good place to start. And that’s where you get that inclusion/exclusion aspect Mr. Chek doesn’t really like. But if you’re religion prescribes a creation story to explain EVERYTHING, then anyone who doesn’t buy it is WRONG. There’s not a whole lot of gray area there.

The “adult region” idea might be apt, but I think what he’s really saying is that religions are “for children”, and philosophy is for adults, i.e. region claims to answer things we couldn’t possibly know the answer to, so buying into them is naive and childish, where philosophy can be discussed, changed and adapted, and is more about how we conduct ourselves, than trying to describe the nature of the world. No doubt, some will find that idea very offensive, but all you have to do is become a historian of religion, and see that that ancient religions tended to describe a very dogmatic universe, where even very small things (like lightning) had a complex, specific, metaphysical explanation. And religion has had to withdraw from these areas, as the world we live in became more ‘known’, and a physical answer replaced the metaphysical one. We’ve come so far that in order to accept one of the Abrahamic religions are this point (for example), one has to suspend reason, and rely on “faith” (which at this point “having faith” seems to have become little more than a justification of cognitive dissonance).

On the other hand “New Age” philosophies (sometimes pretending to be religion), don’t offer the same kind of explanation and fulfillment that real religion can. It’s not the best of both worlds, it’s a different kind of “thing”. And the worst, and perhaps most intellectually dishonest (IMHO) strain of this New-Ageism, i when it purports to to eliminate the dissonance between various religions and fins “the truths” that exist in all of them. What a load of bullshit (IMHO).[/quote]

Very well said. New age philosophy and religion do not serve the same purpose and are not the same “kind of thing.” IMHO both have weaknesses. Faith has come to mean accepting cognitive dissonance. Faith also means “ignore and dismiss all evidence that does not agree with what you learn at church regardless of how concrete it is.”

I was raised in a christian home but I am not comfortable raising my child to be homophobic or to believe that dinosaurs lived at the same time as humans, or that fossil and DNA evidence proving evolution is just bullshit.

New age philosophies do not offer an alternative. They do not explain an afterlife or provide a metaphysical explanation of reality that can be explained to a child.

I remain the undecided voter of the religious/philosophical debate.

78

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]katzenjammer wrote:

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]katzenjammer wrote:

[quote]Raided wrote:
I like the term adult religion there is something very childish about saying “if you don’t believe what we believe then you’re not going to heaven”.

[/quote]

Why? The cosmos owes you nothing, my good man. What’s truly childish is saying “I can do and believe whatever I like and, by golly, I’ll still go to heaven!”

New Ageism is a narcissistic, self-absorbed, pseudo philosophy/“religion.” It is only about attempting to deify the self, to turn yourself into a little god. It’s just the sort of philosophy that would appeal to a guy who talks ecstatically about his own fecal matter.

[/quote]

Well then it is probably much more reaslistic than most religions because we probably are as godlike as any creature we are likely to encounter so exploring our own potential is all there is.

I would not necessarily equate the childlike wish for an all knowing and perhaps all loving creator with maturity and the phantasy to live forever in an afterlife and to be united with an all powerful figure is as narcissistic as it gets.

[/quote]

“Heaven offers nothing that a mercenary soul can desire.” ~ C.S. Lewis

[/quote]

It also holds nothing that any other soul could desire in much the same way as Santa Clause wont come down your chimney either.

[/quote]

I think Heaven and Hell are real, just not in the way people think of them. 4th or 5th demensional “places” or states of being if you will. Think of it like this. You are a human in the movie the matrix, only instead of your program being that of modern day earth, your program is “heaven”. It’s a fluffy soft place where pleasures are imbibed in and everyone is happy because they have everything. There is likley a 4th or 5th demensional being, or beings which attract people who have had thier spirit separated from thier body recently via death of the body. Go into the white light, they will guide you. LOL

Seriously if any of you ever die, do not go into the white light. Allthough this Heaven place may be nice, it’s not what you are destined for. And no, you won’t be there “forever” but you will be there for a really, really, really long time. Like maybe you are there long enough to view the birth and death of several or hundreds of universes.

Also Hell is the same thing. Like feeds on like in the astral, so this entity posing as God in “heaven” is feeding off your lifeforce, you are sustaining it/him. Also the devil dude, same thing, he feeds off your fears and suffering. The thing is, if you stop doing what feeds these guys, they will throw you out. Trust me you are better off. Also Hell is easier to get out of because what is harder, becoming numb to torture and pain, or getting sick of having the time of your life, fulfilling every desire.

Anyways, you gotta keep moving back to the source, stop by different places on your way (after all we all chose to hang out in this cool 3D world called Earth and partake in the “human” experience")

Me personally, I’m going to hang around on the edge of the 3d reality a bit after I die and mess with people who I think are shitheads. Then I’ll go find something cool to do.

V

79

[quote]Spartiates wrote:

[quote]ZEB wrote:
But he is right about one thing, people in industrialized nations are leaving Christianity and those in underdeveloped nations are moving toward Christianity. But, it’s because when people have everything as we do in the US we begin to drift away from everything spiritual. However, we don’t stop worshipping, we’ve just stopped worshipping God and now worship pop culture, a better body, sex, money, science, etc. We have too much, far too much, but that may change in the near future.

I totally disagree. [/quote]

I knew this was coming.

If you look at the broad definition of “worship” I think you’ll agree that there is an undue measure of “extravagance and respect or devotion” to many of the things that I listed. Everyone is hard-wired to worship whether you know it or not. It’s just a matter of what we worship and how. When there is a void something fills it. Some are overly impressed with science and have replaced God with knowledge.

conversely, when you have it all, or think you do, there is no room for God is there?

Really? Tell me how many forms of “spirituality” are there?

Knowledge is a good thing isn’t it? But, do you think that it should replace God, or exist with God? If you’re an athiest I know the answer.

You make a false assumption that was the reason to begin with. God was, is and always will be whether you can figure out when a storm is coming or not shouldn’t play into the equation, but unfortunately it does, doesn’t it? We’re something we humans we can figure out things like never before, yea. Knowledge will increase and I think that’s a good thing, but science is not God and there is a place for both.

80

It would be nice if there was more of a physical part to Christianity. There are some large lazy people at church. Oh well, judge not!