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Post by david on Dec 21, 2016 18:59:39 GMT
Glenn, you have to imagine all the events of the Creation and The Mythos happening in the poitn beyond time and space. That won't be easy, and, if you could do it fully, I think you would have attained the final perfection.
The Daughter created the material world by reflecting the spirit. This is a state of perfect harmony, and She had to reflect this harmony into the world. She did this by means of the quintessence. The quintessence at the centre of each thing contains all the possibilities of that thing in perfect equilbrium. It does this by reflecting the spirit. Every material thing is a manifestation if a spiritual archetype and contains its possibilities in the quintessence.
The Sacrifice of the Daughter contains the quintessence of the world, of which the quintessence of each material thing is an aspect. It is important that the Daughter remains in this quintessence, where She is in a state of equilibrium reflecting the perfect existence of the spirit.
These are difficult conepts, and you can only understand them perfectly by attaining the fianl perfection, but daily meditation on them will help you on the way.
May She be with you,
David.
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Post by david on Dec 22, 2016 17:18:09 GMT
Glenn, I think that to help you see it better, think of the cross. The four arms are the elements of matter. At the centre, the four arms meet, and at that point the elements are in equilibrium. The extension of the arms is a descent into the separativeness of matter. They move further away from each other ass they move further away from the centre. When you stand on one of the arms away from teh centre, you are only aware of that one arm. At the centre, you are aware of all four equally. If the Daughter had moved away from the centre, Her creation would only have been in that one element, not the other three, so it would have been off balance. Only at the centre could She create all four in harmony.
May She be with you,
David.
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Post by Admin on Dec 26, 2016 18:06:25 GMT
Glenn, I think that to help you see it better, think of the cross. The four arms are the elements of matter. At the centre, the four arms meet, and at that point the elements are in equilibrium. The extension of the arms is a descent into the separativeness of matter. They move further away from each other ass they move further away from the centre. When you stand on one of the arms away from teh centre, you are only aware of that one arm. At the centre, you are aware of all four equally. If the Daughter had moved away from the centre, Her creation would only have been in that one element, not the other three, so it would have been off balance. Only at the centre could She create all four in harmony. May She be with you, David. David. OK. The Daughter is in the center of the cross which is outside of manifestation. The Creation extends in four directions as in a cross from the Daughter. What do the four directions of the cross mean? If the Daughter had entered the four fold realm of manifestation she would only have descended to one arm of manifestation? Why? What does that mean? Glenn
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Post by david on Dec 27, 2016 17:21:29 GMT
Glenn,
I'm having trouble accesing the messages on this forum, and I'm not sure where this message is going to, but I think you'll understand what it is a reply to.
The four arms of the cross are hte four elements of the material world. At the centre, they are in equilibrium, and, if you stand sat the4 centre, you are aware of all four at once. The Daughter's Sacrifice was at the centre so that creation would unfold from this equibrium into the four elements equally. If She had stood on one of the arms, one of the elemetns would predominate over the other three, and creation would be unbalanced.
May She be with you,
David.
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Post by racemochridhe on Jan 8, 2017 17:11:06 GMT
Well, I should have been following this thread more closely! Rather than try to respond to a number of interesting individual points, I'd like to offer a summative kind of connection.
David, tell me if I have this right as a recap of what you are saying: The first, spiritual creation was placed in danger of dissolving into the abyss of non-existence by the First Maid's embrace of the Snake. The Daughter forestalled this by carrying the perfect form of the Mother's pure essence into non-existence itself, eliminating the possibility of true, metaphysical non-existence for all time. The First Maid and the world that depended on her as its axial being was, nonetheless, still out of perfect thamë, so that the Mother's pure essence, reflected on the lower plane into which the Daughter had carried it, became manifest as the quintessence, which is the element of aethyr or spirit, and the fact of manifestation led unavoidably to the quintessence's further devolution into each of the four elements, wending their way out from the center. The Daughter, as perfect Love, holds these together in harmony on the horizontal plane from the point of the quintessence, and keeps the quintessence bound on the vertical axis to the Mother's pure essence. Thus, the material realm of time and space is less "created by the Daughter" and more an unavoidable outfolding from the Daughter's sacrificial act—an illusion inherent to existing in a state of separation from true existence. In this way, to answer Glenn's concern, the realm of matter is not something more negative than or beneath the realm of the Dark Queen (who, it should be remembered, is still an existent entity above the abyss). Rather, it is the middle realm that comes into being while one's spirit is not yet ready for eternal communion but has been saved from the clutches of the abyss. Do I have this right?
As to the previous issues raised about sin and its destruction, or the destruction of its punishment, and why sin still exists... It is important to remember that Christianity has developed multiple theories of the meaning and function of the Atonement, some of which are compatible and some not. The early Church Fathers generally held what is called the "Christus Victor" theory, which is (in highly simplified form) that God became man as Christ and that death attempted to claim Christ as a man, but that because Christ was also God death could not claim Him, and the effort destroyed death, setting man free. A second theory, championed most famously by Peter Abelard, was the "moral influence" theory, that Jesus came to live a perfect life without sin even unto the total obedience of death on the Cross, so that human beings could be shown the way to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. A third theory, made popular by the Protestant Reformers, was the "penal substitution" theory, that Jesus had come to take the punishment God had ordained for sin in place of humans, so that they could be "made righteous" in Christ's righteousness.
It seems to me that the Mythos' central theme is the Christus Victor theory. From a metaphysical perspective, "salvation" consists in the fact that you exist rather than not existing, even though you turned from the source of all existence. To *be* is already to be saved. The fact that you have been saved from non-existence, however, does not mean that you have been saved from limited or imperfect existence. That is necessarily our condition until we turn back to the Mother, which the Teachings gives us instruction for doing, with the Daughter as our "moral influence" example. "Being saved" in this context has a narrower meaning of being morally regenerated through adherence to the Daughter's teaching (cf. the Daughters' teaching on "innocence"). Filianism I don't think has a true parallel implementation or perspective of penal substitution, because it lacks the idea that God has ordained punishment, but there are some loose parallels to more mystical aspects of that theory in the idea of letting the Daughter live in us and not attempting to cling to the good solely by our own power.
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Post by david on Jan 8, 2017 18:53:10 GMT
Race,
As I understand it, the creation of the manifest levels of existence came about through the Daughter divesting Herself of Her divine attributes as She descended through the seven gates of the Netherworld. This created the quintessence. The creation of the quintessence and the elimination of nonexistence are not separate acts. In a sense, it is true to say that the unfolding of the quintessence into the four elements is an unavoidable event, but this is not to separate it from the Daughter's creation.
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Post by racemochridhe on Jan 9, 2017 1:47:34 GMT
David,
That is a fascinating way to put it. It sounds almost as though there is an almost literal "this is my body" element to it then, as the Daughter Herself becomes the axis mundi through that descent? Is that right?
-Race
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Post by Philemon on Jan 9, 2017 15:55:13 GMT
Thanks everyone for this discussion. The Sacrifice of the Daughter seems to me a lucid telling of a mythic pattern that is repeated in many forms across traditions. As such, I think it is a story that warrants careful and ongoing reflection as it's pointing to the deepest mystery of existence.
Within the Mythos, I see three stages of creation in the narrative. The first stage is the age before time that precedes the fall of the first daughter. This fall precipitates the crisis of the cosmic flood. The resolution of this crisis begins time as we know it. In this second state, we see only the reflected and refracted light of Dea, not her pure light as in the first stage. The birth of the Daughter is part of the resolution of this flood crisis as She takes on the sustaining functions of Princess and Priestess. The third stage sees the Daughter take on fate, and through her descent accomplishes the restoration of the primordial stage. This journey concludes with Her union with Dea and coronation as Queen of Heaven.
I understand the Daughter as the World Soul. That is, our individual souls are part of Her soul, just as her soul is an aspect of Dea. The microcosmic path of return each soul follows in time is a reflection of the perfect, macrocosmic path of return She has walked. The end of time consists in our souls joining in union in the Daughter, and in that union we become one again with Dea. The sacrifice of the Daughter from this perspective is the macrocosmic archetype of the microcosmic death of our own false selves and the resurrection of our True Selves.
Note, I've been reading A Course in Miracles, which I have found quite helpful in developing my perspective on soteriology. (I have a broad interest in these types of text). This book uses nominally Christian terms, but is definitely not orthodox Christian. It treats our existential condition as arising from a "misuse" on our part of the gift of creativity granted us by God to create a condition of separation. This separation is necessarily illusory, but is sustained by our identification with our own false self, from which guilt arises, and that ever seeks to sustain itself. The salvatory function in the Course is accomplished by the Holy Spirit, which is one very material difference from Christianity.
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Post by david on Jan 10, 2017 18:28:38 GMT
Race,
As far as i understand it, it is correct to say that the Daughter literally had a body, and that She became the Axis Mundi in Her Sacrifice
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Post by david on Jan 10, 2017 18:35:58 GMT
Philemon, your message is, I believe, correct in all details except that I think you are implying we lose our separate existence when we become one with the Dea. If this is not what you are saying, then I apologise, but, if it is, then we never lose our separate existence, but attain to perfect harmony with the Dea.
May Seh be with you,
David.
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Post by Philemon on Jan 10, 2017 23:19:23 GMT
Dear David,
Thank you for your comment on my thoughts on the Sacrifice. I didn't mean to imply that the union in this case meant the extinction of separate identity, at least as presented in the Scriptures. In the Mythos, following the resurrection, we have "And amid tears of joy, they embraced and were one. And after this, the Daughter stood alone." That is, the Daughter is both in union and distinct from the Mother. This suggests to me a state of "inconceivable difference and non-difference" (achintiya bheda abhedha), as the Vaishnava saint, Sri Chaitanya, expressed it. The analogy of the Sun and sunshine is offered to illustrate this principle. Whether this is the final destiny of the soul, I'll leave to the sages.
Philemon.
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