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Having just finished reading his book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope , I agree: John Paul II was exemplary in innumerable ways, but especially in his compassion and his dedication to the cause of exalting human love by magnifying the level of the divine love. I lately read a great deal about the ne...

I'm sorry to see it end, Stefan. I agree that we will probably not achieve a resolution of our different viewpoionts, but then, I never expected that our dialog had that end as a goal -- only that we should share our varied viewpoints so as to understand each other better. In any case, there is a lo...

Sometiomes I wonder if I'm in deep water here without my life vest ... but here goes. You wrote that "the trouble with the word 'God' ... is that ... it suggests an 'other,' as if God were a name, not a Reality." Now, I am aware of (and respect) your position, which I gleaned from reading ...

"As a seeker, I am not concerned with who wrote the Gospels, when the Gospels were written, or whether they are an accurate representation of the events they report. My relationship with the Gospels Teacher, my relationship with the Teachings of the Gospels, and my relationship with JVHV howeve...

Okay … here we go! Let me preface all this by saying that I did not read your post looking for things to disagree with, and I can’t say I really found much to disagree with in any case. Some things I see from a different perspective. We are in some respects like the blind men who described the eleph...

Wow. Thanks for the lengthy and fascinating reply, Stefan. It will take me some time to assimilate it and respond properly. For the nonce, just two quick thoughts that popped into my head: (1) This is all really heavy stuff. Not that I object to the intellectual faculty of man, but I do think that r...

Anna, I've been quite interested in your observation that "With respect to the statement attributed to Jesus "I Am the Way", there are numerous individuals, both living and dead, before Jesus's time, and after, who have uttered the same words with the same conviction, the only differe...

I understand what you mean,. Anna, when you observe that "Whenever I bump into 'its my way or none at all' I get nervous." There is little to be said for the wild-eyed fanatic who demands that everyone conform to his personal experience of God. Still, there is another point of view on the ...

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Art

Your statement, "So, if one is preoccupied with money, or any other physical comfort, when we die, we will continue to be preoccupied with the same after we die," put me in mind of a neat story. A well-heeled gentlemen decided that he would defy the age-old cliche: he WOULD take it with hi...

While I don't buy A Course in Miracles by any means in toto , I must agree with the statement therein that "if you knew Who walks beside you on the path that you have chosen, fear would be impossible." I think that is the key to the question of loneliness. St. Augustine stated it thus: &qu...

From my present point on the pathway, I perceive "spirituality" to be the opposite of "religion" in much the same sense that love is the opposite of fear. If spirituality comes first, it may lead to a response that can be classified as "religious" -- or not. Usually it ...

I see your point: "Thus, the spiritual process is not a choice each of us makes, so much as it is a divinely-inspired evolutionary inevitability." I am not sure about that. It is not so much, for me, a matter of "I am right, you are wrong," as "from my place on the pathway t...

"Just so, in the end, we realize that what we have been seeking all along is our very self. And the very fact of our seeking it, has been the principal obstacle to our seeing it." You do have a way of making an old man think, Stefan. I agree, and I disagree. So I should be a politician? In...

"But it may come in meditation. If not all at once, a piece at a time. Not achieved, not accomplished, not a result of effort; but realized, revealed, remembered. That is, not bottom up, but top down." Well, okay. Something certainly may come -- in fact, will -- in meditation. But whether ...