Abi'l Khayr

I felt like Khayr had a bit of a commentary about Christianity with guilt and motivation. This quote sums it all up. "Then he throws you into self-mortification, so that you continue to strive and, for a while, to pride yourself upon your efforts, thinking that you are advancing or achieving something; but afterward you fall into despair and feel no joy." I have definitely felt this way before. There are times when I am consistently reading my bible, praying, and attending chuch, and I feel good because I am putting in the effort to grow in my faith. Yet, when I have one bad week by missing a few bible studies, or forgetting to pray regularly, I feel miserable because I can't live up to what God wants from me. We are sinners, we are bound to fall flat on our faces every once in a while, come on, we're only human, yet when I do I feel terrible guilty.
On the flip side, I do like how he comments on that "you think 'I love' and find no rest until you perceive that it is God who loves you and keeps you in the state of loving, and that this is the result of divine love and grace, not of your own endeavor." If we perceive that God loves us even though we are so not perfect, we can then love others who are not so perfect. For if God loves me, and I suck... I can love my parents, siblings, boyfriend, co-workers, and neighbors knowing that they will let me down, and I will love them anyways.

Johannes Scotus Erigena

Johannes was very insightful, and I enjoyed reading what he had to say.
"We ought not to understand God and creating as two things distinct from each other, but as one in the same." I think this is true in a sense of Christianity. I just heard a sermon about the holy spirit on Sunday, and the speaker was talking about how God actually enters into our hearts when we ask him to. So in a sense if we look at others we can usually see God or God working on their hearts. He then goes on to talk about being visible and invisible and comprehensible as well as incomprehensible all at the same time. This is weird, and although it looks as though he is contradicting himself, it actually made sense to me. The fact that he was invisible, yet now that we want to accept him and get to know him, he has now become visible. And before when we didn't understand or comprehend who he was or what his purpose is, now he has revealed himself, and has become comprehensible. He was hidden, and now he is revealed. He has made what was originally supernatural and foreign to our lives seem very natural... and so on. This was kinda interesting to read since I had just heard that sermon this week.

Novalis

Wow. Novalis is just short and sweet and gets right to the point. He is very poetic in his writings, some about religion, some about life in general.
"We are close to waking up when we dream that we are dreaming." I liked this quote, because most of us has experienced this feeling. To be dreaming you have to be completely consumed by your dream, otherwise it's not a true dream. There's day dreaming I guess... but it's a different form of dreaming. I love that feeling when you just begin to discover that you are dreaming, and you can control certain aspects of what's happening, like flying, changing your settings, or just changing the direction the dream was taking. It is interesting to see where your dreams may go when you just let them wander freely. Have you ever had a dream with people you haven't seen since you were young? Or dreams that allow you to fly? Or dreams where you are dating a famous actor or something? Interesting what goes on in your mind.
"We are alone with everything we love." This was a very materialistic approach to life. In America, we live very comfortable lives, and are surrounded with all kinds of stuff. Honestly it's all just junk, and most of it we will get rid of in a few years time. So I guess, according to this, you are never truly alone, you have all of your loves right there: Mr. T.v., Mrs. laptop, and little miss ipod. Enjoy!
"There is only one temple in the world and that is the human body." Very different approach than being surrounded with everything we love. Temples are sacred, respected, and holy. If you view your body that way, you will have more respect for it and take better care of it. Maybe some of us should have that approach. It's love your body week, and almost every booth that I saw today had to do with respecting your body. Some talked about gender expectations, sexual orientation, media images, staying healthy, and eating disorders. Hey, you're stuck with your body for the rest of your life, take care of it and hopefully it will take care of you.
"When you understand how to love one thing- then you also understand how best to love everything." I liked this quote. Learning to love someone unconditionally is very hard. Once you truly understand it, you should be able to learn how to love others who need it. Sounds simple enough, yet very hard to do. Loving takes so much effort!

The Hermetic Writings

When I read the opening to this passage, I thought I'd agree with most of what was said, yet while I found that I agreed with a lot of it, most of it I had to think really hard before I agreed. For instance, the opening phrase "If you don't make yourself equal to God, you can't perceive him." I don't believe any of us can really make ourselves equal to the all-perfect God, nor can we ever fully perceive all that is God. But when I looked further at this phrase I realized that he could mean that we should strive to be more like him, or admire him and desire what he has, then we can know a little bit more about God.
I do like the phrase "step beyond all time and become eternal; then you will perceive God."It had me look at life more closely. If we all looked at the world as if it were eternal wouldn't we treat everything differently and with more respect? We think of everything as here and now, in the moment, our generation=our time. If we had an eternal mindset wouldn't it change the world as we know it. Plus God is eternal, looking at the world with his perception should help us in understanding him more clearly. Could our "here and now" concept be largely separating us from God's mindset?
"Wanting to know God is the road that leads to God, and it is an easy road to travel." I do agree with this for the most part. God just wants us to want to know him. Plain and simple. He loves us unconditionally, wanting to know him is the first step to loving him back. "God will come to meet you everywhere, he will appear to you everywhere, at times and places when you don't expect it... for there is nothing in which God does not exist." I truly believe this, that God doesn't want to hide himself from us, and if we can look really close we can see him in everything. He wants that relationship with us, so why would he hide? We just need to find him. That's our task, and shouldn't it be easy since you can find God in almost anything?
"don't think that God is invisible." I think if we do that, we don't see him as a person whom we can have a relationship with, we see him as an object or a thing. Invisible things usually get ignored, and we need to bring him to life by seeing him through everything.

Rumi (part II)

Rumi has a great commentary on worship. He brings in Moses, a very prominent and important character. I think the reason to bring Moses into this story is to show that God is all-wise, and even Moses makes mistakes. If someone just read the first 3 paragraphs of this story, we would have all agreed with Moses, because he talks so eloquently compared to this shepherd who is nameless. Moses accuses him of being too familiar, blasphemous, and using inappropriate terms. Then God comes in and completely turns Moses's ideas around, asking him "Did you come as a Prophet to unite, or to sever? I have given each being a separate and unique way of seeing and knowing and saying that knowledge. What seems wrong to you is right for him." Since God created everyone differently, why not have us all worship or address God differently and in our own way? Who are any of us to accuse the other person of doing it wrong? Where did we learn that our version of worship is right? I think it's funny how some people run around like they have all the magic rule book and answers on how to do everything correctly. God even says that he looks "inside at the humility". Just be humble, and give yourself to him, that's all he wants. And I love how Moses comes back and says "' I was wrong. God has revealed to me that there are no rules for worship...Your sweet blasphemy is the truest devotion."

Rumi

Rumi has a way with words, and explains things in simple terms that makes life easier to understand. I like his comparison of different experiences of life to the stages of life. From embryo all the way to the hunter, both searching for very different things based on their needs in life. While the hunter has gone through all the stages of nourishment through the blood, consumption of milk, consumption of solids, a search of wisdom, and finally search of more invisible game, the embryo has only known the nourishment from the blood. The hunter has experienced the womb, the wobbly first years of an infant, the lessons of childhood, the search for wisdom as an adult to finally trying to discover the "invisible game": his purpose in life or soul searching. To tell an infant "'The world outside is vast and intricate. There are wheatfields and mountain passes, and orchards in bloom. At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding.'" They have no concept of any of this, because their experience is limited. They claim that "You must be hallucinating."