Is our spirits our natural selves?

Question

After thinking so hard about life and why we live, through prudence I have made my own philosophy about life. What if God truly existed, and once was a man like our selves but perfected himself through virtue. I mean, it says in the bible that God is a perfected being right. What if the word of God or his commandments were truly a gift to man to follow his ways and be like unto him, and what I mean be like unto him is be a god ourselves, but understanding that only throught rightousness can such glory be upon us. What if the main reason that God exist was for the survival of mankind, I mean when I look in the past every great man that had committed rightous acts not only to bring prosperity for themselves but also for the people they cared for (e.i. Muhammad the Prophet, Muhatma Ghandi, George Washington, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King ). What if the sacred laws of virtue that God gave us was for the benefit for our spirits to be exalted.

Answer 1

respectable view. but i have another one of my own.

Answer 2

Think much more, and read more widely. Our "spirit", like everything else we can concieve, exist only in our mind. So yes, whatever we think it is, it is part of, or product of, our natural self - along with the potential for imagination, and empathy, and cruelty and kindness. What is this God of whom you speak? And what are "the sacred laws"? Do they include not eating pork, or praying five times a day, or other rituals - which may or maynot make sense, but if so the sense has long been lost in meaningless observation without thought? Most of the other moral and ethical laws of religions amount to no more than the common sense of human experience, or the insights gained from critical thought, such as the insight into managing mind and thought inherent in Buddhist meditation, and to a lesser extent the meditative traditions of the Judaic and other religions. Buddhists only use the mental images of deities or "enlightened ones" as kind of mnemonics to focus the mind of the practitioner on particular aspects of life or human nature - nobody can do the work for you, only yourself, with some help to train "the baby elephant of the mind" to free itself from confusion, preconceptions, and other hobbles. To be "exalted" in not to be superior - merely to be enlightened with a truer understanding of oneself and "other" (the concept or perception of which is only another aspect of yourself - we define our self by what we define as "other"). It is not to become God or even Godlike. Because of our personal limitations, the limitations of our times, and the immensity of what there is to understand, we can never become totally "enlightened". It's a continuing process of discarding as much as acquiring, unsettling, and only for the brave with true "faith" who can entrust themselves to themselves and the universe without the crutches of belief (which is something totally different from faith - belief is fixed idea entailing assumptions; faith makes no assumptions, has no expectations). But as one progresses it is true one may not only bring "prosperity" (not in wealth necessarily, but in the sense of prospering or growing, like a healthy plant) to others, but also find you cannot help yourself from doing so - because it stems from you just being who you have become. Go for it. Discard the confusions of pre-packed fast- food doctrines, and "righteousness", and similar ideas which are external dictates. Pursue your own path, with whatever help you can find, but without crutches. Then you'll be driven truly by your "natural self", a growing entity and integrity. You'll dance!

Answer 3

Our senses are like joysticks. Temptation is what plays us. The spirit is....Zelda? And just like Zelda never dies and you can always play it again, so is the nature of the spirit. All the while our bodies are getting shot to hell. If you must know, it must have been the wine.

Answer 4

Yes......

We are in His image after His likeness. It was the way He wanted it. the image, according to John 4:24, is spirit.....


Your sister,
Ginger,
[e-mail]

Answer 5

John says: `If we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.`

Answer 6

You got it.

i am