religon yes or no

[Lyrs]

I'm impressed with MOST of your responses. This has the be the longest thread that is INFORMATIVE.

nah, everything seems to be just said over and over again.

[El Banana]

I find it strange how the posts here tend to fluctuate in this pattern:

Immature
Mature
Immature
Immature
Mature
Mature
Imature
Mature

And so on.

If that was not the case, the pattern would be:

Mature
Mature
Mature
Mature
Mature
Threatening
Threatening
Insulting
Threatening
Threatening
Murderous

Thread locked and/or closed.

Immaturity helps us lighten up.

[ithaqua]

And we all got to be bitchy, which is always fun.

[Trident]

I find it strange how the posts here tend to fluctuate in this pattern:

Immature
Mature
Immature
Immature
Mature
Mature
Imature
Mature

And so on.

Eh... if we were always mature, life would be boring...

[angelx03]

So, what's the topic about here?

[Trident]

Topic?

[Otohiko]

I find it strange how the posts here tend to fluctuate in this pattern:

Immature
Mature
Immature
Immature
Mature
Mature
Imature
Mature

And so on.

Oh, and as for religion, I happen to follow the belief system that all religions are actually correct, since as long as you believe in something with all your heat and soul, its real, although only to you. It basically goes into the thought that we each live in our own seperate dimension, and everyone around you lives in their own dimension, and etc. etc. etc. into infinity. Basically, I don't think about it very often since by the very nature of my theory I don't have to worry much about anything, and plus its kinda pointless just wandering around in mental circles, although when people argue against my viewpoint I do rather enjoy keeping them stalemated until they just give up, since there is no way to actually prove me wrong. Fun.

Which, my friend, is why I wanted this thread to die pages ago. This kind of discussion doesn't make people change beliefs, in the end you're still where you're started, only more pissed at each other.

What you're saying flows right into my belief in 'subjective reality', where perception determines truth, not the other way... Which, really, is the way it has been forever.

As for the cycle - I'm a cyclic poster on the forum. I prefer not to go with the 'mature-immature' view of it. Rather, I go with 'helpful-serious-philosophical-opinionated-irritated-containing pissedness-too talkative-spamful-silly-clowning around-cracking cheap puns that people either don't get or are irritated by-talkative-normal-curious', and that goes in circles. Probably two weeks per cycle. I've been in the 'cracking cheap puns' stage yesterday, looks like I'm going over to talkative today...

[Tab.]

I've been reading stuff on the Kabbalah the last few days. You can really see where Anno got a lot of his stuff.

"Do not pray for your own needs, for your prayer will not then be accepted. But when you want to pray, do so for the heaviness of the Head. For whatever you lack, the Divine Presence also lacks.

This is because man is a "portion of God from on high." Whatever any part lacks, also exists in the Whole, and the Whole feels the lack of the part, You should therefore pray for the needs of the Whole."

The quotation above, from a disciple of the Kabbalist R. Israel Baal Shem Tov, is a traditional Kabbalistic view: that the creation is in a damaged and imperfect state

The "Zohar" attributes the primary cause of evil to the act of separation. The act of separation is referred to as the "cutting of the shoots". What was united becomes divided, and the boundary between one thing and another can be regarded as a shell. The primary separation was the division between the Tree of Life (Pillar of Mercy) from the Tree of Knowledge (Pillar of Severity).

In normal perception the world is clearly characterized by divisions between one thing and another, and in this technical sense one could say that we are immersed in a world of shells. The shells, taken by themselves as an abstraction divorced from the original, undivided light (making another separation!) are the dead residue of manifestation, and can be identified with dead skin, hair, bark, sea shells, or shit. They have been referred to as the dregs remaining in a glass of wine, or as the residue left after refining gold. According to Scholem, the Zohar interprets evil as "the residue or refuse of the hidden life's organic process"; evil is something which is dead, but comes to life because a spark of God falls on it; by itself it is simply the dead residue of life.

Luria made the first step in the creation a process called "tzim tzum" or contraction. This contraction took place in the En Soph, the limitless, unknown, and unknowable God of Kabbalah. God "contracted" in a process of self-limitation to make a space (in a metaphorical sense, of course) for the creation. In the next step the light entered this space in a jet to fill the empty vessels of the sephiroth, but all but the first three were shattered by the light. This breaking of the vessels is called "shevirah". The shards of the broken vessels fell into the abyss created by contraction, and formed the qlippoth. Most of the light returned to the En Soph, but some of it remained in the vessels (like a smear of oil in an empty bottle) and fell with the qlippoth.

Scholem describes the shevirah and the expulsion of the qlippoth as cathartic; not a blunder, an architectural miscalculation like an inadequately buttressed Gothic cathedral, but as a catharsis. Perhaps the universe, like a new baby, came attached to a placenta which had to be expelled, severed, and thrown out into the night.

Whether cathartic or a blunder, the shevirah was catastrophic. Nothing was as it should have been in an ideal world. The four worlds of Kabbalah slipped, and the lowest world of Assiah descended into the world of the shells. This can be seen in the G.D. picture of the Eden after the Fall. Much of Lurianic Kabbalah is concerned with corrective actions designed to bring about the repair or restoration (tikkun) of the creation, so that the sparks of light trapped in the realm of the shells can be freed.

from http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/faq.htm

[Evil Urchin]

I've always wondered, what does the word Sephiroth mean in hebrew? Its all over the Kabalist Tree, and I wanna know what Square was thinking.

[Tab.]

The origin of the word
"sephira" is unclear - it is almost certainly derived from the
Hebrew word for "number" (SPhR), but it has also been attributed
to the Greek word for "sphere" and even to the Hebrew word for a
sapphire (SPhIR).