Quote from: Jafar on October 10, 2018, 01:45:49 PM
What is secular forms of symbolism?
A secular form of a symbol or a symbolized ritual is just what it is - secular opposes mystical understanding of inner philosophy which lies within the symol.
Secularization of a meaning means
institutionalization of a meaning into a form of human-created institution, which then works to exercise governmental, religious or other 'mechanical' purposes and formal means as opposite of a meaning bearing universal descriptive message, which is conveyed though many forms of messages, such as folklore, textual data, allegories and metaphors, signs and symbols.
Rule of thumb is that the symbol is
archetypal meaning it does not change with eras, regimes, or under other circumstances. They can be interpreted differently, but an archetype still possesses its innate qualities, something which anthropology and semiotics study to uncover (innate meaning of a sign).
Example: zakat as a way to purify your soul by contemplation, good thoughts and good deeds - found everywhere, Bible, Christianity, Daoism/Taoism, Islam. This is a mystical representation of a Golden Rule, i.e. do to others (and the world) as you would wish others (and the world) do to you.
Secular representation of zakat as per Sunni faith: a 2.5 % protection tax so that you can sleep well at night so that the thugs would not confiscate your property or put other sanctions on you.
In other words, secularism implies deprivation of inner meaning of certain processes, phenomena, meanings or events into something practiced on the 'outer', materialistic level as opposite to 'inner' and spiritual. And if you do not like term 'spiritual', you can say inner representation, occult (hidden) or universal, since the universe is subject to universal laws governing it and these laws never write themselves down and are not "revealed" through the book, but yet they manifest in every possible way to make others know they are working.
When certain ideas that are meant as occult and are distributed though metaphors, allegories, signs and symbols become secularized they lose their innate meaning and become meaningless. As such, people dwell into meaningless rituals which serve little to no purpose but yet hide within themselves an inner wisdom, which lies on the level of spiritual/occult, something not sensed by five senses, but can be sensed once you see events occurring in your life.
There is no such thing as 'religious' or 'secular' because a man is by its nature religious and is governed by religion. Religion per its definition means a set of rules governing a body (human, institution, law of nature et cetera). Since we are programmed to sleep and be awake, this is religion. Religion is not subject to certain systems of belief, since believe is everywhere including materialistic forms of worship, such as a-theism, which is also based on faith on every level of life. An example of atheistic belief:
a belief that "everything there IS, is what I see, there is no hidden processes and everything can be measured empirically". Well, they shat their pants when the double split experiment was conducted. And now they go great lengths trying to justify that this experiment is somehow intact with their castrated worldview.
But when something becomes as I put it 'secularized' then a form of representation of certain information simply gets its representation on the outer level as opposite to the inner level on which the conveyed information was initially thought to be represented. A great example is literal translation of the Biblical Old Testament or the Quran, which loses its innate meaning and makes no sense whatsoever. It is crazy to think how many Quranic concepts are misunderstood and that quranism is in fact a cancer of the mind, a veil so to speak, a harem, in which a veil is their psyche covered under delusion of literalism, i.e. literal understanding of occult/inner/hidden information. Luckily, the Quran has left several hints on how to understand it, one being its formulas, the other is reference to other mystical tradition all over its pages. You will not understand the Quran without understanding the Gospel of Thomas, and vise versa.
In such a case Quran becomes a mambojambo, a set of hearsay and unrelated verses, where the innate idea are covered by misuse of language as well as literal understanding of the text. When you see people write "quran-based" articles here simply look at their arguments and "verse juggling" to know what I am talking about. It pretty much abrogates the very focus of a book which is meant as allegory and was never meant to be "clear" as they put it.
A textual information is also a symbol conveyed by the means of a system of signs i.e. letter. In fact letters posses not only vowels and sounds but also numerical value which keeps a lot of inner symbolism within the letters and words.
Sometimes a seemingly ?non-sensical? inscription may hide within itself a formula for salvation.
Everything is a symbol actually. There is nothing in this world, which would not carry a symbol within it, from a full grown tree to growing grass, to sleep and awareness. Everything has inner symbol and tells a lot about who we are and what is our future destination.
Quote from: Jafar on October 10, 2018, 01:45:49 PM
Good carbo exercise...
Exercises do not require religious background, but the very movements they perform during salat can say a lot to someone who knows and can understand the symbol.
Quote from: Jafar on October 10, 2018, 01:45:49 PM
To feed the clergymen....
Zakat means purity afterall. Does it make someone pure if they buy clergymen a car or a mule or allow the latter not to work and live a parasitic lifestyle? I do not see purity, I see slavery.
Quote from: Jafar on October 10, 2018, 01:45:49 PM
Aim and throw practices... also a good carbo exercises...
There is nothing about aiming since there is no specific aim installed on the wall, therefore it does not matter how you throw it. The idea of throwing stones comes from formula "shaytanu rajiimm" meaning "Satan accursed". But looking down at specific linguistic details unveils the secret, of what the word stone "hajara" stands for and how to implement it in your personal life. What does it mean to stone the devil basically? It means a lot to someone who knows and feels its real effect. Throwing stone at the wall does not do the trick, fortunately or unfortunately.
Quote from: Jafar on October 10, 2018, 01:45:49 PM
I don't get any 'hidden' symbolism on the story above..
This requires "third eye" training (not related to the deluded new age concept). And if this topic is interesting to you may dwell more deeply into comparative religion.
Quote from: Jafar on October 10, 2018, 01:45:49 PM
90% of the gospels told the story about Jesus living and only 10% told the story about "Jesus dying / tortured".
But due to the popularity of death cult in middle east during that time, and excessive obsession about death, people tend to put more focus on "The Death of Jesus".
Death started with Adam already, and is very clearly represented actually. But of course people imagine a couple hiding their body parts from angry man and running away and then being barred from eating from the second tree.
Quote from: Jafar on October 10, 2018, 01:45:49 PM
Then introduce the next evolutionary stage for the sacrifice rituals..
Instead of spending money to buy lambs to feed the poor.. why not spending money into collective funds for student scholarship.
Explain, logically, the benefits and the potential impact of such ritual...
I would logically explain that we do not own anything in the first place and only use resources as guests, therefore we have no moral right to take more, to take excessive amount of human, animal and estate capital into our possession. In the Quran this sort of excess is called riba, which again is mistranslated as "giving loans". But the word means excess. Now tell it to Saudi or people loving good life but who call themselves muslims nonetheless. Islamic banks are no better than classical "loan-based" banks, they still aim at the same concept of accumulating money from profit and hierarchal distribution.
It is also important to note that you are not given limits of excess, nowhere in the Quran or the Gospel, although the Gospels emphasize on being poor is better than being rich. But there is nowhere written a limit of what excess is or otherwise defined, same as with majority of other concepts, thus the concept becomes complex to grasp. On the contrary, things like twelve tribes or seven heavens are given an exact amount of BUT they are painfully misunderstood. Twelve tribes become actual clans to the profane, which despite the lack of any evidence still keep millions of people believing into their historic existence; and the Seven Heavens become actual seven layers of atmosphere, which we know is not true based on observable facts. That is because the word and conveyed information itself is highly symbolic and require analysis of the Self in the first place. And how does one know if he/she lives in excess or not? By exercising the knowledge of the unified reality, awareness of unity and exercising compassion. Without understanding the unity one will dwell into solipsism, and without feeling compassion towards suffering of others one becomes a psychopath who is unable to feel misery of others and therefore lacks instruments which would allow him to analyze his reality as opposite to others.
Now one other thing worthy of note is that the knowledge or awareness is not given from the beginning of human life and is meant to be acquired in the process of development. As such, world itself at its current state is but a ground of purification/purgatory and is meant to be cruel, unjust and tortuous, because crucial information is hidden from the beginning and is also kept hidden by the possessors of knowledge, i.e. the clergy, who are interested in keeping people in slavery. But the very moment one becomes 'awaken' one starts exercising his thoughts, emotions and actions into a better perspective thus 'programming' his experience into better, i.e. the Golden Rule, unless of course he does not transgress the limits and does not break the rule after becoming acquainted with it. The latter is possible and we can see super successful individuals and orders who manipulate people as the flock of sheep by using the psycho-social mechanism of mind control. They themselves have knowledge or a part of higher knowledge of cause and effect at least, but do not share it, because that's not what they want. They do not want a generation of sincere, standalone and mindful individuals, that does not benefit them. They need a flock of slaves which chooses between a "complex dilemma" of entering a slaughterhouse either from the left or the right side. They need a poor Chinese worker solving a complex dilemma on whether to hang himself
after or
before the lunch. Indeed, a complex question to ponder upon...
Economic reformations and evolution will not solve the problem as long as one nation or a cartel of nations live excessively exploiting the 'third world' of poverty and cheap labor. This is also the rule of balance, order and chaos.
If there is an abundance of something in one place, there is poverty and lack on the other side.Quote from: Jafar on October 10, 2018, 01:45:49 PM
Agree..
Ironically.. it was the 'satanic cults' who often claimed / posed as "God" / "Angel" and accuse those who dare to question their dogma as "Servant of Satan". I observed such pattern also exist in this forum.
Most churches willingly or unwillingly actually serve 'Satan' despite proclaiming "words of Christ". That is why it is important to study human psychology and anatomy. Even the fact that eyes create an
upside down image due to their curvature means quite a bit as to how we should perceive this world and differentiate between real and illusory. So called fake Christians say the follow the Christ yet run in first rows to serve Uncle Sam. Muslims differ no better.
Today when they [authorities] will push the button, a lot of idiots both local and on the NATO/international levels will run mindlessly with arms killing each other as the flock runs in the slaughterhouse, choosing between right or left door to the slaughterhouse as it somehow makes them a real difference, because they haven't analyzed the situation they are subject to in the first place.