But he made loving a commandment...

Then don't do it ; you're not free if you bow to an external source or even your conscience . Obviously each person would have a difficult time creating all the supposed to dos and don'ts and so if another says shovel the snow in front of your house and you agree because you understand that the little old lady might fall then you have acted freely.

If you obey without consideration then you follow a commandment without consideration and you are not acting freely. If dogma reigns in your life then you are probably not acting freely. If you understand, in any form the "thou shalt not kill" then you will be acting freely. You can't create the world and so advice comes along and its up to you to follow or not.

This is nitpicking and pedantic with a twist of words that makes any consideration meaningless; the difficulty with abstract logic,. but I'll stop now for I'm sure you understand what I've said; it may not be perfect but its enough. The best to you.

Telling, if one wants to join a club, and is refused, it doesn't mean that one's freedom has been denied as the club also may act within freedom and make the refusal.

We are not alone and its not all about us.

Of course there is. But, apparently you are too ignorant and uneducated
to know.

Do some real research, and stop posting stupid inanity on the internet.

Yeah that is odd, particularly if you long consider and explore the idea and practice of loving, up to the point of considering perfect love. As a command it can be metaphoric or misinterpreted, but the more important informational value is about the loving. Why would something such as love, kindness, forgiveness, all related experiences which people find liberating as choices require a command to perform?

Clearly our individual choice to love is a vital element to that experience or it wouldn't be liberating to choose!

An emphatic testimony of experience is a more realistic portrayal of a well-considered and practiced notion of loving.

Lolcommandaments.

Im not sure love is a choice. I know you can learn to love or try to be more opened to it, but i also know you cant just turn it off and on as some kind of choice. Least i cant.


But if you are commanding it with any or on the other side. Love me, or...To me that is not only impractical it is corrosion.


As a metaphor or something that should be strived to. Ok. But as a command. Sorry God of the bible but you didn't make my brain able to make the choice to love you, or not. So i guess i "chose" the or...

Always think of this song with those verses.



But thats not how love works. For the most part its one of those things that just is.

What was offered Love imbued Wisdom. The Old Testament is about "Commandments" but the New Testament in no way denies the Old Testament .

Each of the Gospels portrays a route, a path, if you will, but the future paths are within each individual man's grasp .

Aquinas states it best in that the Old Testament is about "Timor" or fear while the New Testament is about Love.

If a man denies "freedom" because he has to breathe air without his approval then it is a real fix. If we say that we shouldn't eat until we understand digestion then we'll all starve to death.

Re: Jesus and capitalism-

The institutions and systems of society can only be as good as the people who operate within them, and people can only be as good as their nature allows them to be. It's clear to me that Jesus was focused on the source of the problem. His teachings about money shouldn't be viewed as being motivated by a certain economic philosophy. He was attempting to teach something much more significant and impactful than that.

You obviously read the bible to find your own views there. I don't, which is the advantage of holding it to be little but a overvalued fairy-tale. If you don't submit to God and the word of God, the bible is completely clear: No salvation. I know this doesn't work well with typical new age spiritualism, but hey... join the club, the Bible is at odds with many popular beliefs.

As for your comment on science and atheism they are prejudicial nonsense. There is nothing inherently materialistic about neither science nor atheism. I, as an example, have participated in research and I am also an atheist. I'm not a materialist, as it is a superfluous doctrine. Empiricism is superior in every respect.

I'm not a fan of "condemnatory Christianity" as it becomes apparent that the "freedom" spoken to cannot be manifested so long as a deterministic stance is taken.

Speaking to this, a great religious leader within Christianity Augustine brought forth this same determinism which has been espoused by the Protestant churches but denied by Roman Catholicism which espouses "free will". I don't have the knowledge of the Eastern or the Coptic Churches or others but the two main sects of Christianity are at odds over this conception. Calvin and the Presbyterians certainly espouse the deterministic and "chosen"characteristics of this dilemma.

Aside from the fact that the intellectualist and abstracted methodology holds fore today which means that argument and strictured dialect reigns it is good to understand as to why Augustine came to this conclusion.

Augustine was a seer in the sense that he could observe beyond the sense bound( or could he?) world but what he saw was the evolution of the physical bodies of Man. If one enters into this thoughtful process and only relates to the senses we will see nations arising and falling. Peoples entering into extinction while others thrive in their physicality. Individual human beings of a savage nature while others present with the noblest of possibilities of the human condition.

The conclusion was that some will fall into the morass of degeneration while others will rise to greater heights. Out of this is only some will be saved (Calvin) and I'm not sure where the others go but the lesser beings fall into destruction.

From this the deterministic stance the idea of 'submission" which in the Islamic ethos is called "fatalism" arises. We are determined , some to the good and some to the bad and we've got nothing to say about it save the call for "mercy"., Impressively heartbreaking.

Now I've floated from Augustine to Islam and hope to come back to the point (s). Yes, there is an arising and falling within the world as we see it as in the plant kingdom.The life of spring comes to full blossom in the summer only to slowly decompress into the fall until the complete plant death in the winter. The animal likewise brings forth life and death and its intermediaries as does the human being.

As an aside the minerals, plants and animals do not experience 'death" only Man does, but that's another story.

What Augustine saw was the evolution of the physicality of Man much like the modern scientist sees physicality in his studies. Augustine was able to come to the realization that there is an "evolution of the body" but did not see
an "evolution of the soul". It is possible for nations and races and peoples to fall and disappear from existence but the soul /spirit of Man does not comply with the lawfulness of earth.

Within the spiritual the law of metamorphosis or "change" exists but not "death". In the scientific parlance the earth will continue on into a degenerate welter which is called entropy because of the "law of conservation of matter and energy" as we all fall victim to resistance and die the scientific death a tepid nothingness.

Hopefully from the above one can see that , as seen by some, man had reached the nadir of materiality during the Roman times and that Being called the Christ, who was known to come as brought forth within the mystery centers of antiquity and to the common people, came to earth and went through "death", that which was not of His spiritual nature. In this He has become to guide for mankind in man's overcoming of death into a higher realm of existence where death does not exist.

He came at the right time, the right moment, so to speak, and exists within the earth, which is to say within each and every one of us, as we pass from life to life and improve our human state. We know that this cannot be in a deterministic state for then there will not be the improvement of Man but an automaton of which man is not.

We aren't "Human Beings" as of yet but the future holds for us this state of being.

This spoke somewhat to science of our day but there is more but understand that the "conservation of energy and matter" must be understood and when it is, this supposed law will fall into oblivion.

I enjoy reading your posts carlo. You're a deeply learned man. I agree that there's a whole world of experience that opens up once you're free from a narrow empiricist philosophy, and sadly tame_deuces is so bound into the empiricist religion that whole planes of existence and thought and possibility are closed to him/her.

Empiricists do win wars and feed and clothe people though, which is why their credibility has grown far beyond their (intellectual) worth. We live in an empiricist world and are indoctrinated in it heavily. It's nice to see someone with a broader perspective.

Thanks, man...

You can't have it both ways guys. Circlejerking on empiricism being the anti-thesis of religion and spirituality, and then lovingly agreeing on calling it religion as an insult... well, any characterization from me shouldn't really be necessary.

Being more interested in characterization and trying to sting people, to the extent that you are even willing to contradict yourselves when doing so, is fairly sad.

Whoa, horse; I appreciated the kudos but I'm not playing team and have never said anything about empiricism.

It stands on its own, more or less as an epistemological approach but in no way obviates religion unless your epistemological empiricism only allows sense based realities which again comes back to what is known as materialism.

Even materialism is a misnomer but it would be better called fixed based Cartesian coordinate system as used by Copernicus (3 dimensional) which leads to weights and measures or in essence "magnitude" to which mathematics speaks.

Not to deny mathematics but at present we have a scientific mathematics which stands on its own, again, and lends credence to the scientific approach of the day. The qualitative approach, which can be mathematical, in which items like color , tone and even warmth and light are included is a futuristic hope but not in evidence now. Then the fixed coordinate system and what is known as materialism will fall away.

I can't go on; if you wish to discuss empiricism then do so .

No, materialism is not about "only allowing sense based reality". It is a premise about the nature of the universe (that it is all matter and matter interacting). It is a global metaphysical assumption, and must therefore be based on something more than sense-based reality, unless you are omniscient.

I see no more value in materialism than I see in supernaturalism. They are both like like tasting cake and saying "food is sweet".

Sure its the same free will but the driving force behind those two things you mentioned are two very different things. Night and day difference-
Looking at this from your perspective and looking at how you phrased it you could say you buy those socks to feel good about yourself and validate your ego because it feels good to you, it fills a need in you. If you are truly doing something good for someone , the will is completely free of the ego and the driving force is not you, or the will, it is directly coming from god. People can't accept this because they're ego will not allow them, it convinces them that free will is all that matters when in fact it is the perversion of man that follows in this free will thought, it is the cause of endless suffering since the dawn of time. The will is just an instrument we all have access to. People make a big deal because they think the will is the most dangerous weapon because you can train it and you can accomplish big things and you can choose. It is not, your mind is the most dangerous weapon, your will is subordinate to it and follows its instructions regardless of what you think (its called lying to yourself) . you are a slave to your thoughts and feelings because you allow yourself to be. The will is just an illusion born from mind.

None of that provides the peace, security, or comfort of warm feet and so is not a reasonable inference of my perspective.

The will is not "free" which exploits others or in a real sense performs invidious deeds of any sort. To assume that one can be "bad or good" because of free will is to not come to grips with the idea of freedom within the human soul.

In practicum , if we were to consider an invidious deed it will be gleaned that a man is not acting in freedom. Freedom and Love go hand in hand as one cannot love outside of freehood nor can one act within free will without Love.

The "free man" can live with other "free men" for they will recognize each other in their love for the act in progression.

In another perspective the Love manifests in a selfless behavior which is "free" and displays the ennoblement of the Ego that to which , as a spiritual body of Man, lives within the knowledge of "good and evil" and in effect the "Ego" can fall prey to evil but in a real sense can and does transform the "evil' into the "good"( "and deliver us from evil").

The Manichean perspective which is futuristic presents as the human soul takes the evil onto to himself and thereby creating this transformation of evil into the good.

Going on into "evil" an example would be the past milieu of Man within his nation, race, clan and even gender. The Love manifested within those particular entities was right and proper , for example, 3000 years ago. If one were within a clan of the British Isles an offence to his fellow clansman would be an offense to all of the clan and consequences may be brought forth as the clan acts together as a supra earthly entity; the "Ego" of the clan was not individual. this was right and proper and within the "good" of the clan. Love for one's clansman ruled and we see this with vestiges within present day nations , races and even gender.

Man, through his presentation within these entities is now "released' in the real sense that he presents with his "individual Ego" which he always had but was contained within the higher entity as noted above. the echos of this 'relaese' is within the New Testament in which the "blood" was being broken and the new was the individual Ego within the community of Man, the Community of Christ.

Within this community, freely chosen, is the individual man all of nuanced and different colors which are the expression of "free men", each to his own particular "color", so to speak. This is the futuristic state of man who in turn develops the earth body into the new, all within recurrent lives, and thus we have a new earth, of regeneration within the deeds of men.

Of note, the "good" of the past within the clan has become the "evil" through which the individual man works. this doesn't mean that love for one's nation is "evil" but that the individual man, in predisposition , brings forth that very love of his clansman onto a new appreciation of the love manifested within the worldly and cosmic .

Just noticed something in a previous post,; in the perspective one can see that all this is accomplished "consciously ", through the "ego" of man and so denigrating the "ego" speaks of incomprehension of what the "Ego' really is; it is as real or more so as your physical body as it is the spiritual in man, and does work within thinking or thoughts which is the only way to come to consideration "consciously"; thoughts and thinking cannot be denied.

Clarity comes through "thoughts and thinking", the importance of the soul of Man. Feelings and will impulses contain thoughts but Man;s entry is through thinking. If i am a Frenchman and you are a Brit we certainly will have different "feelings" within our nations but the only way for us to come together is within thought and thinking; the manifestation of this Love, the Love within freedom, the freedom of Man.

Whatever helps you sleep at night.

The distinction between ego and egocentricity comes in when examining acts or works of mercy. An area of interest here?