worship

[fredhedd]

swiss cheese, kindly though.

[jilola]

Nope. Don't worship them. I can love 'em and respect but I don't see them wanting worship.

2cents

jouni

[Arie]

tsk tsk tsk...fredhedd didn't your mother warn you about saying stuff that doesn't make sense.  Alf is in the tree....and the chicken is after me.

[DjMidgetMan]

The benifits of worship are for ourself, not for God... It makes us spiritually pure, and makes us good human beings... It makes us happier because we constantly remember God and Heaven, which makes this life seem less stressfull. Worshipping God makes us modest. I dont think God would force us to worship him, because He is so great beyond our imagination, that he would not 'need' anything from us... Worshipping God is for our own good.

DjMidgetMan
  "Mind over Matter"

[jilola]

Now what is worship then?
I don't believe worship in and of itself makes anyone any better or purer. What makes us better is the sincere and conscious reverence and respect we give to the ideals and beliefs in life. Worship is only a formalized expression and if the sincerity and conscious intent isn't behind the worship then it's just going through motions.
Now I'm not trying to belittle your or anyone else's ways, beliefs and such, just putitng my point of view into words.
But I don't think we're too far from each other positions.

2cents

jouni

[fredhedd]

i was just stating my opinion but i was doing it as quietly as i could.  i typed swiss cheese, kindly though to say i thought that there were a lot of holes in the topic, but i wasn't saying it in  a bad way.

i believe in order to discuss issues like this there has be be clear cut definetions of the terms used.  worship is one of them and i'm not talking about what the dictionary says.  everyone could have a different idea on what worship is.  god also is pretty undefineable.  by that i mean to everyone.  everyone definetly has their own opinion on what god could be.  here we have one word that maybe can be agreed on and another that can't.  you say 'he' so i assume you believe god is an entity.  i may believe that god is existence.  i love existence so what should i say if i believe god is existence, in reply to your post?  if it wasn't clear what everyones idea of god is than how would you know how to feel about anyone else's opinion.  how would you know how to take it in?

when struggles are finally overcame, who's to say (if there is a god in the way that some  think) that the person in question was the one who overcame?  who's to say god didnt help right there at the end where the struggle ended?  maybe it would have gone on longer.  

if someone believes in prayer but doesnt see results that are expected, how is it known that results never occured from it at all? if you pray someone have a 'good' life and some 'bad' things happen, maybe they aren't that bad because it made for a stronger person.   how can anyone be sure prayer doesn't work.  also, what is prayer?  for many of us it's asking for something, whether it be for yourself or for others.  if you pray for someone else, aren't you asking that they be looked over or taken care of?  prayer could also just mean intent to someone.  i may 'pray' by thinking 'i know i have the power to make myself healthy, or to make someone else happy and i send my best intent to do so.'

[Arie]

Fredhedd......your right....I think I just opened a big can of worms here.  In order to have this discussion everyone has to state what they believe God is and what they believe prayer and worship is.  You all don't have to unless you want to but since I started this thread I guess I should state what I believe.  

First off I believe there are different levels of God.  I believe there is a level of God that is all knowing all powerful and everywhere present.  Now I do believe this God is a personal being.  If he wasn't then how could I talk to him.  Now truthfully I don't know if this level of God is in time and space. I don't know.  If I do pray or worship....which I don't....this would be to the God that I would be praying to.  Now there could be a God in time and space such as the Christian Jesus....but personally I don't believe in Jesus because I don't believe in the bible for various reasons.  If he really is God I want to meet him myself....and see what truth he unfolds.  Now I also believe there must be other levels of God that isn't personal.....and to tell you the truth....I don't know how many "levels" there are.  Maybe seven....maybe one hundred.

When I say prayer I do not mean just intent....I mean supplication....that is to me what prayer is.   As for worship.....I mean adoration.....thanksgiving.....praise.....honoring....etc.  I can't think of any other words.  To me when someone is "worshiping" God there not asking for anything.

Now I'll state my opinion.  When you look at the universe....and even eternity.   We are little babies....in this vast universe.  We don't understand alot......we each even have to define what we believe God and worship is.   Maybe if you believe God helps you in some way.....then I could see why you would want to adore him....give him thanksgiving.....honor him.   But in my life I have no proof that he has done jack for me.   And I want proof before I worship.  To me I have had to fight all my struggles myself. Maybe God believes that we're not ready to see him.  Maybe the difference between us humans and God is sooo inconceivable that it would be impossible for God to help us.  I don't know.  But until that day when God does something for me....I can't worship him.  Thats my opinion.......and I would love to hear all of yours!


"when struggles are finally overcame, who's to say (if there is a god in the way that some think) that the person in question was the one who overcame? "

Are you going to tell that to all the people who have come out of the worst experiences of their lives....that "hey guess what?  Are you sure you did that your self and it wasn't God?"  Think about it.  If I just came out of a bloody war where my best friend just got killed....are you going to tell me that?  If so....why didn't God save my best friend?   Why would he let this war happen?  Why didn't God perform some miracle where all the guns didn't work?

To me....there must be some natural laws....as to why God can't influence are lives.....we have to do it ourselves.  If not then whats the point of existence....if we don't have to do any of the bad stuff ourselves....we'll just rely on God.  

"if someone believes in prayer but doesnt see results that are expected, how is it known that results never occured from it at all?"

From this I can only speak from experience......when I prayed....I prayed for specific things....not generalizations. And guess what?   Nothing changed.  Nada....zilch.   Soon enough....it felt like cold water has been splashed on my face.  I believe I've been brainwashed into thinking my whole life that prayer is of real value.....if your in need...pray about it.  Its almost become commercialized.  I can already see the bumper stickers saying "God answers prayer"  ahhh that is such bovine excrement to me.  Now....I'm not angry....and I don't hate God for this......but it made me realize NOT to rely on God for my problems.  It made me realize that staying true to yourself is the most important thing in the world.  Because who do you have to rely on if God isn't there for you.  Yourself.......it may be the cold hard truth....but to me its true.

If God really could break natural laws....don't you think he would do it.   I mean I don't see God watching all of the starving children in afica and just laugh.  I don't see God doing that.  I don't know.....maybe God has a reason for all of this...maybe even a plan.....but right now in my existence I have no clue what it is.   I think its way to early in our existence to even contemplate that stuff.  All I know is that "God" doesn't really matter.  Thats why when I hear of people beings atheists etc....I'm thinking good for you......I have absolutely no care in the world if someone doesn't believe in God.  Because to me....it doesn't freaking matter.   I could believe some old man is up in heaven watching over us all....haha....and that is God.  It doesn't freaking matter.   If you all want to pray....then pray.  I used to pray...but not anymore.

If you all want to worship....then worship.  I used to worship too.

"how can anyone be sure prayer doesn't work. also, what is prayer?"
I already answered this question.

Geez this is freaking long.....I would love to hear all of your opinions.

Adios

[MJ-12]

vf

[fredhedd]

what do you mean by different levels of god?  do you mean different levels of existence?  if u believe that your god is an everywhere present being wouldn't that make that god in time and space?  you use 'him' alot.  if god were a he, wouldn't that make women less?  if there was a creator then what other proof would you need besides the ability to have that thought in the first place?  what other proof would u need than your existence?

not believing in jesus as in existed or agreed w/ the man?   have u read the bible?  if u met god wouldn't you be one w/ god?

it sounds like you believe that there is a good possibility that this god wants worship.  if that were so and there was a creator, wouldn't it make more sense to make something that would do just that?

i'm not telling anyone anything about god helping them through struggles.  im suggesting it's possible if god existed that he could have helped someone through whatever.  how would they  know?  what's to say if someone died it wouldn't actually help them  in the end?  maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't.  maybe they mourn for a year, two , ten, to  have the rest of your life and including that time to reflect on it and change the person.  

your 'natural laws' idea should answer your question about god interfering w/ the guns idea, or more generally interfering at all.  

i believe it's either known or thought or maybe just my opinion that prayer works better when asked in generalization.  asking for specifics may be more selfish.  maybe.

sounds like your not to keen on your idea of god yet you still capitlize it when you type it.  

i usually don't give my personal opinions on subjects like this.  you'll notice i use 'they, someone, person' instead of 'you'.  my opinion in this case however, is that you are not really sure what you believe in.  it's hard to have any type of negative feeling on what you  aren't sure you believe in.  pinpointing god may be impossible so how to you go about making any decisions on 'it', let alone negative ones?  it's hard to discuss something that you can't discuss.  

have you had any reiki experiences?

swiss cheese, kindly though.

[Lysear]

i am still deciding whether go exists so Its hard for me to go any further than that at the moment.

                            Lysear

[fredhedd]

it may be easier to believe in god if we all had the same idea on the explanation for it.  if we all were to agree that god was 'x', it may be easier to believe 'x' existed because we do.  when someone says that astral projection is bs or that it's crazy, the easiest reply for me to say is that our existence right now is just as bs and just as crazy but normally is taken for granted or looked over because it's everyday.  you can't get something from nothing.  existence is truly awesome.  awe-some.   if it were possible to be 'non-existence' and somehow it was told to you that our lives as we know it here existed, you'd probably say that's crazy.  if we exist, anything and everything does exist.  to say yes to one existence is to say yes to them all.

[Arie]

Fredhedd.....you seem to like plugging holes in what I believe in.  This could go on forever.  I state what I believe....and then you plugging holes in it.....and then I answer that and so on and so on.  I don't feel like doing it.  Anyways you can't change what I believe in.....and I doubt I could do the same to you.   I started this thread because I was interested in what other people believe in and there reasons for it.   It seems that I'm the only one doing it.....and I don't like it.

I would be happy if anyone could state what they believe God is.....what they believe worship is....and if they do worship....why.

I already stated my opinion......and I why enjoy reading all of yours.

[fredhedd]

not meant to attack, just discuss. i still love you.  we're still on for dinner later right?  then maybe church in the morning?

[Arie]

Oh yeah....8.00pm baby.....we're going for italian right?

Bye sugar buns.

[kmd242]

I dont think there is terminology for these topics. It goes beyond words. Trying to state your ideas always falls short of others understanding, and a lot of the time people get VERY defensive, accusatory, and condescending. Then your left with a rift that is based on a argument about something very subjective (in my mind). And that, my dear friends, is a seriously problem that is directly affecting our respect towards others in a negative way. Well, i dont buy into it. I think the powers that be use religious morals as a excuse to condemn what they are afraid of. "It says so in the Bible," is not a valid reason. "The Koran Wills it," does not cut it. You are responsible for your own behavior, and if you want to start blaming your actions on a book, the point should be made that its not a valid point.
On the other hand, Religion holds a great message(sometimes), like the ten commandments, Jesus's message, and other stable moral ideas. You gotta be able to separate the rhetorical money grubbin, from  the postitive message.
"I dont believe in the Beatles, I just beilieve in me." -John Lennon

[DjMidgetMan]

I believe God is all knowing, present everyone, nothing escapes Him, and he is all powerful. I believe that he is seperate from creation, and that he has no needs. I believe that God created us out of the mercy of Him, so that we could experience life.
   I believe the belief in God is deep inside ourselves, but we lose it as we get distracted by the evils around us. I believe the believing in God is a natural state of being that everyone is born into..  Yet as we face the evils of society, we forget. I believe that we are born with a test to see if our souls can return back to the belief in God when it is shown to us(through the Bible, the Quaran) and that if we have faith to resist the temptations of life. I believe that God has the power to interfere in our lives, yet if He did interfere frequently, the test would be broken and the existence of God would be so obvious that the test would be meaningless.
   I stated most of my opinion on woship on my previous post on this topic, but I would like to say a couple more things. I believe that we should worship because He gave us life, and gave us the ability to experience life with our senses. If that isn't a good enough reason to worship Him, than I don't kow what is. Refer to my previous post for the rest of my opinion.

DjMidgetMan
  "Mind over Matter"

[James S]

Those who are deeply devoted to God seem to need to worship him. Is this because they have been told it is the right thing to do? And by whom? God himself? Or those who proclaim to be speaking for God?
Is worship truly an expression of love towards ones chosen deity, or is it more a ritual borne through forced compliance?

I was visited by the Green Lady, Mother Earth herself in human form. Many beliefs see her as a goddess and worship her as such. I asked her about this. She told me quite clearly and quite plainly "don't worship me, just love me."

Those words really meant something to me. They were simple but quite dramatic in their effect because they blew away a lot of old misconceptions.

Don't worship me, just love me.

How many times do you think God has tried telling this to people who insist on going through lenghty repetative rituals as part of their "devotion" to God.

I sometimes think some people are so busy worshipping their chosen god they no longer hear what it is their god is trying to tell them.

I'm sorry if some disagree with my view of "worship". It may seem a little harsh, but having spent most of my adult life in churches full of people who claim to "love" God, I have seen more routine ritualistic behaviour come from worship than I have true love.

Yes Jouni, I remember talking about this with you a few months ago, and I still agree with everything you said.

James.

[jilola]

Although I'm not one to worship I feel I need to make it clear that there's is nothing wrong about worship as long as it's backed by love and respect, in this order IMHO.
It is not the form but the content.

2cents

jouni

[SiVA]

For me, worship helps me get closer to attaining Love of God. Sure there's other ways to get there or maybe some people don't even WANT to go there, but it's all relative, relative in that, what works for me, will NOT work for other people.

God Bless

[Paukki]

When I was a kid being forced to go to Sunday school,  I implicitly understood "worship" to be a ritualized sort of public confession along the lines of "I am weak, but Thou art strong", and/or "I am sinner, but there is no sin in Thee, please have mercy and save us", etc.  It made me squeamish and uncomfortable, usually, because nothing was proven in my own mind--I wasn't even certain there was a God, much of the time--and you could see the rote behaviour of the adults and how there wasn't much passion at all in it. So...did they really believe in what they were saying?  Or were they just taking out an insurance policy because death is universal, and EVERYBODY knows that?!  By the end of the 1960s the young adults of the baby boom generation were beginning to lash out at this sort of thing, (passionless path-following, whether into church or into war),  all across the board--there was a parallel movement cropping up in Christendom, too, by the early 1970s, in which young adults were becoming passionate about the "personal relationship" (i.e., with God/Jesus) thing, and sometimes the "Jesus freak"  on the street corner handing out tracts asking if you had "a personal relationship with Jesus Christ"  didn't look any different than the hippie handing out tracts saying where to gather tonight to protest the Vietnam war.

By the time the 1970s were ending I was in a little "passionate" church that met weekly in a welding shop and I still remember the young preacher trying to get across this idea that true worship is not about rituals with songs and candles and such, but is about what your actions say about what you truly believe.  In that context, I wonder how many hippies and Jesus freaks ended up becoming much like the parents against whom they rebelled, turning in the beard, beads, and long hair for the yuppies' BMWs and white collar job.  So you guys are right...what is worship?  Swiss cheese, man.  I don't even know how to answer it without causing inner conflict, if not outter conflict.  Most of my actions go to work, to a job I'm really, really tired of, because I have a mortgage to pay off and good-paying jobs are hard to find.  So am I "worshipping" mammon, filthy lucre, materialism, or what?  Recently I read Paramahansa Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi", and that's full of miracles and interesting stories about Indian holy men who can live naked in the Himilayas, (haven't they read natural law?!!),  and by my childhood implicit understanding, and my the understanding of the preacher in the welding shop, I can see how people in that culture worship not just God, but their gurus, (and, reading it, I felt that same squeamishness and whatnot that I felt as a kid in Sunday school.  Perhaps I am just a dyed-in-the-wool "secular" type of  westerner, doomed to die in front of a tv set after a last meal of a tv dinner.)

Well, I've got to go now.  The Academy of Remote Viewing finally sent me the last 5 tapes the Remote Influencing Thought and Reality through Time and Space course, and I'd like to spend an hour on tape 3b.  I spent an hour in the morning and an hour at night.  So is my "worship"......changing?      http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/images/icon_Smile_wink.gif" border=0>   Btw, I'm almost done reading Gary Zukav's "The Seat of the Soul", anybody read that?  There's a whole chapter on "reverence" in it.

--Paukki  

[Gandalf]

Personally, I think that the concept of worshiping higher being is wrong.

You should love and respct them, but this is quite different from the mainstream religious idea of bowing and scraping before them for forgiveness.

Let me ask you this... have you ever heard of cases where people have encountered higher beings such as spirit guides, angels etc and these beings asked to be worshiped? no, all they ask fo is love and respect, which is qute right... they do not want to be grovelled to.

This is one of the things we have learned from all the exploration of the astral world.... that we are responsible for our own destinies... higher beings are there to guide us and love us but its down to us.

I would hope that we are now beginning to move away from the concept of standardised, state religion and moving onto the path of individual spiritual development which its all about...
Douglas

[teejaybird]

I'll throw in my little bit to what is really a very important subject. Worship, I am led to believe simply comes from "worth-ship" meaning something that you  value ie. love, astral travel, self-determination, freedom, justice, the right to pursue happiness etc. maybe even another person, maybe even a God. The worship of organised religions is simply an attempt to find the deepest and most extensive object of this desire of human beings to give value to things, one that the widest and broadest number of human beings can come to some common agreement upon. Human beings by their nature, worship something other than themselves. I thank God that this is so, for while I have a particular kind of value that I quite properly put upon myself I do not make myself the highest expression of my values. I only have to look in the shaving mirror in the morning to realise the foolishness of that. Anyone who has tried the practice of worship seriously knows full well it is nothing to do with grovelling as Gandalf seems to think, anymore than anyone who has put in the serious discipline and hard work that astral travel requires knows it is more than a foolish fantasy -  those who have never attempted the Worship of God and stuck with it and struggled with it for a very long time really know very little of what true worship is.  At the heart of it maybe the fact that so much of the world we have inherited is coming adrift. We all seek something solid on which we can put our trust. If some people find that in seeking the glory of God in a more traditional way what is that to anyone else??  I am a traditional Christian worshipper seeking to explore something of the realms of the spirit in a less than traditional way but when I am together worshipping with others, I am with the broadest, most comprehensive cross-section of hopeless, wonderful, mixed-up, delightful, annoying human beings that I can find anywhere. Wouldn't have it any other way.

[jilola]

quote: Human beings by their nature, worship something other than themselves

I have to disagree here and offer myself as evidence to the contrary.

I maintain that human beings by their nature seek to relate to something other than themselves in the physical form.
This, for some, takes the form of religion in its various forms, for others self adoration and for others many ither forms of attaining this goal.
Gandalf does have some truth to saying that in many religions worship is synonymous to groveling. I have personal experience at this.

The truest kind of devotion a deity worth praise can ask is love and respect and in my opinion even deities mhave to earn the love and respect. Being almighty isn't enough.

But to each their own. My beliefs are not those of others as theirs are not those of mine.

2cents and L&L (combining two sigs from now on)

jouni

[teejaybird]

Thanks Jilola, This is the first forum I have ever contributed to. Just as well you might think.

You identified a primary weakness because I miswrote wot I meant. I believe that all humans by nature worship something, humans will worship anything, even themselves in the absence of some kind of God to hang things on,  because of a need we have to give value to life. Worship is about values. Basically religious worship is directed towards that mystery which gave us our nature, which brought us into being, a creator God. By giving worth to that reality, we value ourselves, and we value others. We stand before a beautiful reality that makes our jaws sag, not unlike a young man looking at the girl he has just fallen in love with. We have a tendency to feel worthless before such beauty, to protest our unworthiness when we make comparison with ourselves, to be grateful when she takes our hand and tells us to stop being silly and we know our love is accepted and returned. Worship is a bit like that, it requires lots of love and humility, ie compost in which living things can grow and be nourished. And it takes us out of ourselves. Bit like astral travel really.
Hope this is not too boring!!
Terry

[Tom]

I worship myself. What I seek is the greatest potential of all people. Buddha was a human. What he became is beyond my understanding. I will seek the same goal. I worship my potential as a human. Anyone else read Ayn Rand?