Exactly what do you suppose Jesus in the Gospels meant by being born again?

    Response to the Jesus's baptism in fire and spirit is not very familiar to the various Christian sects post:

Elizabeth RoWrites Elizabeth’s Substack

Anyone here ever read the writings of St. Louis Marie de Montfort? He speaks of the second coming that will be experienced in the spirit-therefore Paul was part of the second coming. It is understood that this present day represents the second coming where some of humanity will have prepared themselves to be able to Experience the second coming of Christ. New worlds and all that. Religions can be preparatory as they feed the intellect but don't get too lost in knowledge and forget about the mystic heart.  

Sloan Bashinsky

I haven't read that. I don't think Christ ever left, and maybe there will be a second coming on this world. Jesus taught how anyone could move into the Christ energy. I never was attracted to the second coming prophesy. Each day pushes me plenty.  

Elizabeth Ro
So Jesus taught how to enter into the Christ experience?-DUDE! THAT IS THE SECOND COMING !! At which it is not a thought but an experience and cannot be argued but Self-Realized. The proof being in the pudding.

Sloan Bashinsky
In that sense, yes, although I would cast it more as being born again, in the becoming a very different person sense Mainstream Christendom views the 2nd Coming as Jesus coming back to take charge and run things on Earth for a while, and people being taken-up in the rapture, right out of their clothes, and other people being left behind or sent to hell, etc. The angels schooled me on many things, but they didn't say anything about Revelation in the New Testament, other than the fellow it came out of, John, didn't know what it meant, so how could anyone today know what it means? :-) The angels were and remian really focused on living each day as best as we can, that's the walk with God on this world. The future is irrelevant, in that sense? 

Elizabeth Ro
I would agree with you in using that "born again" term which is also a product of that mainstream group but it is not at all sense related.  

Sloan Bashinsky
In the Gospels, Jesus said a person must be born again to enter the Kingdom of God. Christendom acknowledges that, but mostly does not understand what actually is required. 

Elizabeth Ro
Actually "born from above" or spiritual birth-therefore representing an invisible non-earthly (descending) birth-Christ Awareness, which we agree Jesus leads the way.and Discipline (ascending) prepares us. The senses relate to mankind''s ascending efforts and the Christ Awareness represents the Descending handshake that is born within-when it happens there is no mistaking it for any of the six senses. 

Sloan Bashinsky

I have had countless experiences with what is beyond the human senses. I get up each day and deal with what the day brings, trying and hoping to be in sync with my training by angels and my dreams. I also try to have some fun each day, because there's plenty of no fun going around. That's the whole program. Because of the training, I feel like someone from another planet, who is stuck on this planet until the mother ship fetches me back, or something else causes me to adios.

 

    Posted in Reddit's r/spirituality group:

Jesus Christ
Is Jesus Christ real or is he a concept that was borrowed from somewhere to create a whole saving person? Is his whole story a myth from the Romans? I ask this because I have been hearing of how Christ and his behaviors are the very essence of how we were meant to live as humans. But that was picked up and was gone to form what we have as Jesus.

Puzzleheaded
Read the four Gospels and decide yourself? I know for a fact that Jesus existed and some of his story was told in the Gospels, and some of it there was not understood very well later in history, nor today. But I cannot prove that to you, nor to anyone, and I'd be nuts if I thought I could prove it. I'm not a Christian, but I was raised in that religion. I don't belong to any religion. I'm shanghaied, by God, and it's not imaginable to anyone who has not experienced it, but there are some stories in the Old and the New Testaments of people who were shanghaied. It happened to people not in those regions, too. 

 

    Posted in Reddit's r/spirituality group:

Opinion on Christianity?!

I was raised Christian and for the most part I agree with living a godly lifestyle. Honoring your temple(body), prayer, do good be good, selflessness, n etc. I just have a hard time understanding Jesus being God. I’ve also have had a very strong spiritual life as well. Just trying to decide what to do.

Puzzleheaded

Jesus in Gethsemane asks God to spare him what lies ahead, then he prays, not his will, but thy will, O Lord, be done. In the wilderness, Jesus declined to act as if he were God. In the Gospels, Jesus spoke of God as his father, and that’s in The Lord’s Prayer. To the extent you live as he taught in the Gospels, you are saved by him, even if you are an atheist.

BeastBossKittens

Love this, so tru amen 💕

    Posted in Reddit's r/spirituality group:

What makes earth beautiful? 

I just want to know your reasons for staying here?

Puzzleheaded

At 81, I wake up every morning, wondering why I'm still here? Then, I get out of bed and start dealing with what is in front of me. Some might call that chopping wood and carrying water. I think if religious people lived in my skin a while, they very well might wish there was no God. 

Looking back, I think I can count 12 entirely different lives I have lived in one lifetime, so far. I had very deep relationships with 8 women, one at a time, and when I was with them, something new opened up in me, of which I was not aware. They enriched my life, and it was not always easy for them to be with me.

It looks to me that humanity, in the main, is insane. because its femanine is fractured and it has lost it creativity and is cloning itself and devolving.

I think if what angels known in the Bible do to and for humanity, what they did to me and for me since early 1987, maybe 50, 000 people will survive it, and perhaps that will be enough for humanity to start over.

As for the planet, its is beautiful, even though humanity has made it less beautiful, and if left unchecked by the planet, ETs, God, humanity will destroy the planet, and thus itself.

I told a veterinarian friend the other day, since he declined to treat me like an old, ailing pet whose time had come to be put down, I went to an animal rescue shelter, which has vet. I told him I want donate my brain to one of his animals, if the animal wants it. He said he had several animal, who had expressed interest in having a human brain, and when did I want to come in and he would put me to sleep and take my brain and give it to one of them?

My veterinarian friend laughed. His girlfriend sort of laughed. He knows I would do it, if I could find a veterinarian who would go along with it.

Meanwhile, I've been telling the mother ship to come get me, and she doesn't seem inclined yet.

So, here I still am, wondering why I'm still here, and I see this Reddit post in my email account, and I take the bait, again.

    Posted yesterday on Substack by internationally-recognized war correspondent Chriss Hedges:

Children of Gaza - by Mr. Fish, October 8, 2023

Dear child. It is past midnight. I am flying at hundreds of miles an hour in the darkness, thousands of feet over the Atlantic Ocean. I am traveling to Egypt. I will go to the border of Gaza at Rafah. I go because of you.
You have never been in a plane. You have never left Gaza. You know only the densely packed streets and alleys. The concrete hovels.  You know only the security barriers and fences patrolled by soldiers that surround Gaza. Planes, for you, are terrifying. Fighter jets. Attack helicopters. Drones. They circle above you. They drop missiles and bombs. Deafening explosions. The ground shakes. Buildings fall. The dead. The screams. The muffled calls for help from beneath the rubble. It does not stop. Night and day. Trapped under the piles of smashed concrete. Your playmates. Your schoolmates. Your neighbors. Gone in seconds. You see the chalky faces and limp bodies when they are dug out. I am a reporter. It is my job to see this. You are a child. You should never see this.   
The stench of death. Rotting corpses under broken concrete. You hold your breath. You cover your mouth with cloth. You walk faster. Your neighborhood has become a graveyard. All that was familiar is gone. You stare in amazement. You wonder where you are.
You are afraid. Explosion after explosion. You cry. You cling to your mother or father. You cover your ears. You see the white light of the missile and wait for the blast. Why do they kill children? What did you do? Why can’t anyone protect you? Will you be wounded? Will you lose a leg or an arm? Will you go blind or be in a wheelchair? Why were you born?  Was it for something good? Or was it for this? Will you grow up?  Will you be happy? What will it be like without your friends? Who will die next? Your mother? Your father? Your brothers and sisters?  Someone you know will be injured. Soon. Someone you know will die. Soon.  
At night you lie in the dark on the cold cement floor. The phones are cut. The internet is off. You do not know what is happening. There are flashes of light. There are waves of blast concussions. There are screams. It does not stop.  
When your father or mother hunts for food or water you wait. That terrible feeling in your stomach. Will they come back? Will you see them again? Will your tiny home be next? Will the bombs find you? Are these your last moments on earth?  
You drink salty, dirty water. It makes you very sick. Your stomach hurts. You are hungry. The bakeries are destroyed. There is no bread. You eat one meal a day. Pasta. A cucumber. Soon this will seem like a feast. 
You do not play with your soccer ball made of rags. You do not fly your kite made from old newspapers.      
You have seen foreign reporters. We wear flak jackets with the word PRESS written on it. We have helmets. We have cameras. We drive jeeps. We appear after a bombing or a shooting. We sit over coffee for a long time and talk to the adults. Then we disappear. We do not usually interview children. But I have done interviews when groups of you crowded around us. Laughing. Pointing. Asking us to take your picture. 
I have been bombed by jets in Gaza. I have been bombed in other wars, wars that happened before you were born. I too was very, very scared. I still have dreams about it. When I see the pictures of Gaza these wars return to me with the force of thunder and lightning. I think of you. 
All of us who have been to war hate war most of all because of what it does to children.
I tried to tell your story. I tried to tell the world that when you are cruel to people, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, when you deny people freedom and dignity, when you humiliate and trap them in an open-air prison, when you kill them as if they were beasts, they become very angry. They do to others what was done to them. I told it over and over. I told it for seven years. Few listened. And now this. 
There are very brave Palestinian journalists. Thirty-nine of them have been killed since this bombing began. They are heroes. So are the doctors and nurses in your hospitals. So are the U.N. workers. Eighty-nine of whom have died. So are the ambulance drivers and the medics. So are the rescue parties that lift up the slabs of concrete with their hands. So are the mothers and fathers who shield you from the bombs. 
But we are not there. Not this time. We cannot get in. We are locked out. 
Reporters from all over the world are going to the border crossing at Rafah. We are going because we cannot watch this slaughter and do nothing. We are going because hundreds of people are dying a day, including 160 children. We are going because this genocide must stop. We are going because we have children. Like you. Precious. Innocent. Loved. We are going because we want you to live. 
I hope one day we will meet. You will be an adult. I will be an old man, although to you I am already very old. In my dream for you I will find you free and safe and happy.  No one will be trying to kill you. You will fly in airplanes filled with people, not bombs. You will not be trapped in a concentration camp. You will see the world. You will grow up and have children. You will become old. You will remember this suffering, but you will know it means you must help others who suffer. This is my hope. My prayer.
We have failed you. This is the awful guilt we carry. We tried. But we did not try hard enough. We will go to Rafah.  Many of us. Reporters. We will stand outside the border with Gaza in protest. We will write and film. This is what we do. It is not much. But it is something. We will tell your story again. 
Maybe it will be enough to earn the right to ask for your forgiveness. 

 

Sloan BashinskyWrites Sloan’s Newsletter

Horrific, Chris, what is going on in Gaza now. Alas, this round was started by Hamas, and I wager Hamas very much hoped Israel would respond in this way, meaning, Hamas doesn't care how many Gaza children and adults get killed by Israel, and it bothers me that you don't condemn Hamas, as well as Israel. and It bothers me that you don't address the cause of all of this, which is the Jewish Scriptures, the Christian Old Testament and New Testament, and the Koran. A friend of mine said that Hamas does not worry about how many Gaza people Israel kills, because they become martyrs and go to Paradise. Maybe if America had accepted the post-World War II Jewish refugees, there would be no Israel today, and the three Abrahamic religions would have nothing to fight over in Palestine. Maybe if Israel becomes so desperate that it unleashes its nukes, Palestine will be uninhabitable and in that way the three Abrahamic religions have nothing to fight over in Palestine. What if America offers today, what it did not offer after World War II - a home to every Jew living in Israel? Do you think the American Christians would go for that? Or would they say no, again. Would they want Israel to continue to defend where the Jew Jesus was crucified at the behest of Jewish leaders 2000 years ago? 

 

 sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com