Have you gotten into Jonathan Vervaeke? I was religious once, but I was a member of a more materialist fundamentalist protestant church that had castrated itself from its traditional history. I had resented my religious past. I was psychologically manipulated into all of these beliefs and it angered me for so long that I couldn't justify God's existence if the creator of such a heinous and forsaken reality could have possibly been benevolent. Then I too found Pageau. He transformed my understanding of it all. I fell in love with Christian mysticism, but I cannot bring myself to return. I feel very lucky. Instead of my mind being forced into blind submission, it was strong enough to take the trauma I had experienced and refine itself, blessing me with reason and skepticism. But despite my newfound love, I am prohibited by the framework itself from participating in it. It does not allow for the outsider to engage unless they submit themselves to it wholly. You cannot believe in the truth that humanity can reach the identity of heaven through self transformation unless you believe that Jesus historically and literally died and resurrected. You can't accept that without also accepting all of the liturgical symbolism for interacting with reality or relationships presented in Genesis or the books of law. Most of it is a beautiful religion. It's my culture. But I have to sacrifice too much of my moral and rational integrity to join in its communion, so I find myself drawn here the same as you, finding myself pulled in not by identity, but by something more archetypical being satiated through looking into the window.

Seek and you will find. I was like you, and one day, it happened. Don't give up!

@@justinthillens2853 What have you got to lose by participating in Catholicism or Orthodoxy? I see the good that you speak of in Pageau's outlook (I share it), but I'm missing what you are hanging on to in your outlook.

@@FrJohnBrownSJ I see it as maintaining humility. I essentially believe the god of Christianity to exist, certainly not in the personified sense but more of an alignment between truth, love, and consciousness, and I believe that humans have the mental capacity to overcome themselves by aligning their consciousness with those ideas, but what I don't accept are the more procedural notions of how Christians are to participate in the system they have created to comprehend it. The adherence to biblical inerrancy, the necessary acceptance of all historical and supernatural claims, the invalidation of other ideologies... It seems to me to be much more like hubris for a creature so limited in perception to think they have exclusive access to those kinds of truths. I see no absence of the same truth being presented in the dao de jing or Buddhism or Plato's allegory of the cave or Disney's the lion king. I don't see how the truth is contingent upon one story, and even in context to that particular story it seems as though everything Jesus has revealed to Christians can be/has been embodied through other individuals from other cultures who have revelations of their own. I see no reason that one cannot come to god if their value of love propels them into a state of enlightened selflessness

@@justinthillens2853 I think I understand what you mean. I was expecting a list of goods unattainable by a Christian mindset. Instead it seems like you described a religion that embodies a few unfair stereotypes. That may sound rude, but I certainly don't intend any rudeness. I think it would do you some good to read some of the early Church Fathers, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, or even some of the documents of the Second Vatican Council. Christ's peace.

And the flower points to its Maker.

Emergence vs emanation... who knows which is primordial?

@@youssefsammouh501 Neither; enter non-duality.

What is it like to be a bat?

How does a gay man see a hole in the wall?

@@yossariandunbar2829 One I've thought about for 30 years...

In whichever way it uses it

@@06rtm this is the correct answer

The thing about opposites is, since one is always defined by the other, their character tends to flip. To see how heaven can be actuality consider the stability and rationality of the heavenly bodies - they are (to our eyes) perfect circles and totally stable - any movement is perfectly defined like clockwork. On earth on the otherhand you dont naturally find perfect forms like circles and movement is constant and chaotic. Hence, in heaven you find the perfect principles and on earth the potential to manifast them.

@@superroydude i agree, but you can frame it from the other side. On earth you have the world as it is, and in heaven you have the world as it could be.

@@Simon_Alexnder Sure that's why all cultures looked to the heavens to divine the future. Opposites always interpenetrate each other - think yin and yang.

@@superroydude I agree with you here. The issue is that they way a culture chooses to look at this dichotomy is really important. The question of wether that which comes from above is 'potential' or 'actuality' is core to how the religion will function symbolically.

@@Simon_Alexnder I disagree. Only religion recognises that heaven and earth are both, in a fractal manner, actuality and potentiality. That these categories are finite and ultimitely under God.