yeah I dont like when people distinguish God from Godhead in that way. like one is superior to the other for its involvement in the material world. for me it is nirguna brahman, saguna brahman, atman, and ishvara

you lost me man, what does this mean

honestly in my view it is despite muhammad and despite luther that great mystics came from either persuasion

yeah huxley you should really explain who these people are

without a doubt the greatest muslims are Sufis and yet modern political muslims would love to have Sufism extinguished, it is such a crime

this kitten was in my yaoi folder for some reason

yeah I still dont understand why Buddhism doesnt believe in Atman

okay the perennial philosophy slaps so far

unlike catholicism in my understanding protestantism has produced few to no major saintly people with genuine experiential knowledge of the absolute, though it seems that the christian theosophists (not to be confused with the later theosophy movement) had a general philosophical idea of it it

wish I could talk about my spiritual experiences but last time I did I was told to seek a therapist schizo. at least reading certain scripture lately has been nice. it has been years since I read the upanishads, months since i read the gita and I never read the new testament before.

mundaka upanishad (hinduism) vs the cloud of unknowing (catholic mysticism)

middle english is incredibly readable and a joy to read with modern spelling and a glossary.

I mean imagine an abrahamic talking this way about part of their scriptures

shvetashvatara upanishad is so good

will have beets when I'm hungry next hehehe

alright time to attempt sleep

at the most religious point of my life I tried to pray for at least 30 minutes everyday and renounce the fruit of my actions as a sacrifice to God, it was very hard for me and I make myself seem better than I was. anyway i lapsed after that and fell into a deep personal hell which I'm still in. hopefully next time I try karma/bhakti yoga it goes better for me, I have reason to believe it will. (divine grace)

I believe the only reason(s) the east has more successful (at uniting the soul with God) mystics than the west is that in the west there is on the one hand an emphasis on knowledge (and jnana yoga is incredibly difficult, much moreso than bhakti and karma yoga or a synthesis thereof) and on the other hand due to abrahamic religion there is an emphasis on widely-approved-prophet--revealed scripture instead of on personal revelation that still rare but not just a few "chosen" people can have (often leading to scripture revealed to a select few, like the upanishads or the dhammapada, but this scripture is taught to prepare a way for personal action towards enlightenment not to create orthodoxy or orthopraxis so much). and when people like st. teresa of Avila or the Baal Shem tov had mystical experiences and attained siddhis, they were faced with a society that didnt treat them as the start of a respected guru lineage based on their personal experience with conquering the ego but that demanded compliance with orthodoxy. so you had levitating nuns who were still expected to adhere to orthodoxy, and wonder working rebbes who were expected to teach torah more than anything else! but this idea of mine is very half baked like most or all of my ideas...

oh neat Anna's archive is on .li now