god just never listens...or replies

[c7ityi_]

So, you have to force yourself to believe in God?

Believing in God is not something I have convinced myself about (you misunderstood me). But I don't know if I can even say that I believe in God because I think God is just consciousness.

We don't have to believe in a God to have our wishes become reality. We just have to believe that thoughts create reality. A belief in God is just a helpful tool (if you understand religion and God) to put more focus on our wish. "God" does exist, but it's just... us...

What I am reading is that itt is a conscious decision you make to believe in God, then you must perform these rituals to manifest that desire to believe into being.

We can learn to choose most things consciously (like beliefs) simply by focusing our thoughts on them.

If believing in God is something that you must convince yourself of, THEN you have certain actions you perform in order to force that thought into a reality, I don't understand why you make that conscious decision in the first place, because it quite obviously is counter-intuitive and does not align with your thoughts and core beliefs, because you have to make yourself believe it.

Core beliefs may be "wrong".

But we can't convince ourselves about anything if we don't first believe in what we want to "convince" ourselves about. When we start convincing ourselves about something, we already believe (the seed has already been planted), so we're not trying to convince ourselves, rather, our belief is in the process of becoming stronger.

I am not trying to play games here, and I am not saying anyone's belief is right or wrong, because I simply don't know myself.

What belief is right and wrong depends on who you are. My beliefs don't have to be right for you (because we're not the same person)

 

[lightgigantic]

One Raven

“ Originally Posted by lightgigantic
Actually even interms of just mundane social networking - the best way to get in contact with someone important is to get in contact with a third party who is dear to the important person ”

Ohhhhhh....

So, we are not all dear to "God, our father", only the clegry is.
God doesn't give a flying fuck about us, unless we have an "in" with one of his crew.
That explains it.
Thanks for the clarification!

I could be wrong, but I can't call to mind any scripture that declares that god is sold out to an institutional stamp - a saintly person is not qualified by an institutional stamp but by qualities

BG 18.42: Peacefulness, self-control, austerity, purity, tolerance, honesty, knowledge, wisdom and religiousness — these are the natural qualities by which the brāhmaṇas work.

Sanat sujata (mahabharata) - These are the twelve qualities of a perfect brahmana: following religious principles, speaking truthfully, controlling the senses by undergoing austerities and penances, being freed from jealousy, being intelligent, being tolerant, creating no enemies, performing yajna (sacrifice), giving charity, being steady, being well versed in Vedic study, and observing vows.

etc etc

If you want to say that saintliness cannot be institutionalized, I would agree, but not to say there is something about an instituition that prohibits a saint from appearing in one

 

[lightgigantic]

Actually, what you are essentially saying is that God plays favorites. God, unlike a famous person, is omnipotent. He doesn't have the excuse of being too busy or exhausted that he can only communicate with preachers and the faithful (ie: The presidents of his fan club). So if he is going to ignore starving children in third world countries in favor of millionaire preachers in the states simply because they are more 'holy', I call that playing favorites. He should be a big enough of a man too look past his ego and actually help out people, even the people that don't have faith in him or pray to him. Instead he stands idley as innocent people are beheaded. Oh wait, I forgot, anytime anything bad happens it's our fault, and anytime anything good happens is in the grace of God's glory that it happened.

I go over this a bit in my post to raven (under this one)

As for why there is suffering in the material world , that is dealt with in another thread - bu tin short it appears that you have the view that the material world is the abode of enjoyment (this is actually the principle of the spiritual world) - if people are suffering inthe material world it indicates that collectively and individually we don't know how to enjoy (if you want to pursue this maybe you could take it up in the other thread to avoid the labour of arguing the same issues in several threads)