I.O. Book Tours Presents "The Door is Open" by Andrew Cort Weekly Guest Post 6

Welcome to Weekly Guest Post 6 of the book tour The Door is Open by Andrew Court.  Watch for a weekly guest post for the next several weeks on my site!

WHAT DOES ‘REPENTANCE’ REALLY MEAN?

Jesus ministry begins at the Jordan River, where John is preaching Repentance. This also signifies that our own journey of spiritual awakening must begin right here with Repentance. But what exactly is Repentance?

 ‘Repentance’ is generally understood to mean a sincere feeling of regret and sorrow (not merely a hypocritical claim of regret and sorrow) for a sin against God, as a result of which we hope to procure His forgiveness and avoid punishment for our evil acts.

But actually, the Greek word that is translated in the Gospels as ‘Repentance’ is Metanoia, which really means to change one’s mind, to think in a new way. It implies a manner of thinking that is beyond our usual state of mind.

The Bible consistently teaches that all spiritual attainment begins with thinking in a different way. Unless the Mind changes, unless our attitudes change, nothing in the world will ever change, for we will remain forever exactly as we are.

At an early point in the New Testament, Jesus’ disciples bring up a recent story of some Galileans whom Pilate had viciously murdered. Jesus asks them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all the other Galileans?” He then reminds them of a recent disaster in which a tower had collapsed and killed a number of bystanders. “Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them – do you think they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?” On the contrary, he says, none of this happened to these people because they were evil. They did not ‘deserve’ it.

Then Jesus concluded by telling the disciples, “Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

What are we to make of this strange warning!? It cannot mean that all the disciples will be murdered by Pontius Pilate or crushed by a falling tower. Nor can it mean that they will all necessarily be punished with a painful death if they do not feel the appropriate amount of guilt for all the dreadful things they have done in life: plenty of sinful people die peacefully in their sleep without ever seeking forgiveness.

What this means is, ‘unless you change the way you think and awaken, you will die in a state of unconscious, meaningless, sleep, exactly as they did, and that means you will disappear forever, just as everyone does who dies unawakened.’

This is what Jesus wants his disciples to concern themselves with. For him, religion is not about social morality – and certainly not a vindictive self-righteous morality or a sentimental need to be ‘good’. Religion is about the perfection and ascension of the soul, and this begins with Metanoia.

Andrew Cort is an expert on the inner message of Spiritual Awakening that is always ready to be found in the wonderful stories of the Bible and Greek Mythology. To receive several FREE GIFTS from Dr. Cort (a copy of Chapter One, ‘Making the Decision’, form his new book, THE DOOR IS OPEN; a copy of his article on RECONCILING SCIENCE AND RELIGION; and a complete version of the Bible’s erotic masterpiece, SONG OF SONGS , adapted as a Poetic Dialogue to be read out loud by lovers; as well as a subscription to his SPIRITUAL GROWTH NEWSLETTER) click here http://www.andrewcort.com/Gifts . You can also learn more on his blog,Spiritualityand Religion

.

Interested in buying the book? 

Amazon Paperback

Amazon Kindle

Website  http://www.spirituality-and-religion.com

Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/andrew.cort.3

Twitter  www.twitter.com/andrewcort

Goodreads  http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1409094.Andrew_Cort

Be sure to check out the next stops on the tour:

10/17  My Cozie Corner  Weekly Guest Post 6
10/18 Simply Infatuated    Weekly Guest Post 6
10/18 Reading, Writing and More  Weekly Guest Post 6
10/18   My Little Pocketbooks  Spot light and Giveaway 
 10/19  The Bunnies Review   Weekly Guest Post 6 10/22  A Night's Dream of Books  Weekly Guest Post  7
10/22  My World  Weekly Guest Post  7

To follow the entire tour,  please click here.

Disclaimer:  I don't usually post a disclaimer on a guest post, but I am today.  Guest posts such as this do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of the owner of this blog.  This is guest post is for the sole purpose of promoting this book and creating a dialogue about various "religious" things.

I.O. Book Tours Presents "The Door is Open" by Andrew Cort Weekly Guest Post 5

Welcome to Weekly Guest Post 5 of the book tour The Door is Open by Andrew Court.  Watch for a weekly guest post for the next several weeks on my site!  

NOUS – “THE EYE OF THE SOUL”

Just as we all have many different appetites and emotions (which are usually in conflict, and which can be interested in all sorts of healthy or unhealthy objects), we also have many different, and often confusing, mental functions: we have random thoughts, images, and memories; we have stored facts and data; we have logical processes; we have practical knowledge about how to do various things; we have theories and beliefs and opinions and all kinds of prejudices, etc. Where, in the midst of all this mental clutter, is the True Ruler of the human soul?

Socrates believed that no one does evil consciously. Our thoughts and notions may certainly be irrational or even foolish, but we always believe that what we are doing in any given moment is the right and proper thing to do: if we knew that what we were doing was 'evil' we could not keep doing it. So the 'True Ruler' of the soul, that ought to be making decisions, would have to be that part of the mind which absolutely knows, beyond any mere opinion, the difference between good and evil − the part of our soul that is capable of unerringly discerning 'the Good'.

Does such a place exist? Plato thought so. He called this part of the soul Nous.

Nous is that special place in our intellect - beyond the confines of imagination, belief, and even reason - that arrives at knowledge by sudden, uncontradictable, insight. Such an insight (we have all had them) may follow in the wake of a long and painstaking period of questioning and pondering, or it may appear inexplicably out of the blue, but when it arrives it arrives in a flash. In general, these are rare and involuntary events, for this is a potential human faculty that usually lies dormant. But Socrates believed that it is possible for this faculty to become conscious and deliberate. In fact, he said that 'awakening Nous'− not merely studying or thinking − is the highest task of anyone who wishes to perfect his or her soul. It is possible, even easy, to have a keen and clever mind, to know a great many facts, and to be filled with practical and theoretical knowledge, and yet to have no authentic Wisdom because one's Nous has never awakened. Such a soul is always like that ship whose captain has been narcotized, a ship which is either in a state of endless anarchy, or which has been taken over by one or another tyrannical usurper: some harsh or foolish passion, appetite, belief or prejudice, which 'rules' and ruins one's life.

For Socrates, then, Wisdom is not about knowing many things or understanding difficult ideas. It is always and only about awakening one's soul to wonder and insight.

Andrew Cort is an expert on the inner message of Spiritual Awakening that is always ready to be found in the wonderful stories of the Bible and Greek Mythology. To receive several FREE GIFTS from Dr. Cort (a copy of Chapter One, ‘Making the Decision’, form his new book, THE DOOR IS OPEN; a copy of his article on RECONCILING SCIENCE AND RELIGION; and a complete version of the Bible’s erotic masterpiece, SONG OF SONGS , adapted as a Poetic Dialogue to be read out loud by lovers; as well as a subscription to his SPIRITUAL GROWTH NEWSLETER) click here http://www.andrewcort.com/Gifts . You can also learn more on his blog,Spiritualityand Religion.

Interested in buying the book? 

Amazon Paperback

Amazon Kindle

Website  http://www.spirituality-and-religion.com

Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/andrew.cort.3

Twitter  www.twitter.com/andrewcort

Goodreads  http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1409094.Andrew_Cort

Be sure to check out the next stops on the tour:

10/10 The Bunnies Review  Interview
10/10  My Cozie Corner  Weekly Guest Post 5
10/11 Simply Infatuated   Weekly Guest Post  5
10/11 Reading, Writing and More  Weekly Guest Post 5
 10/12  The Bunnies Review    Weekly Guest Post 5
10/15  A Night's Dream of Books  Weekly Guest Post 610/15  My World  Weekly Guest Post  6

To follow the entire tour,  please click here.

Disclaimer:  I don't usually post a disclaimer on a guest post, but I am today.  Guest posts such as this do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of the owner of this blog.  This is guest post is for the sole purpose of promoting this book and creating a dialogue about various "religious" things.

I.O. Book Tours Presents "The Door is Open" by Andrew Court Weekly Guest Post 4

Welcome to Weekly Guest Post 4 of the book tour The Door is Open by Andrew Court.  Watch for a weekly guest post for the next several weeks on my site!  

A NEW LOOK AT ADAM & EVE: Part 2 – “The Rib”

“When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.”

Notice here that Adam’s behavior in this story is completely passive. Throughout the scene, he is silent. The Serpent and Eve have their discussion, she decides to eat the fruit, she gives some to Adam, and he eats it too. That's all it says! The story doesn’t say that Eve tempted Adam, and nothing in the narration or in his silence suggests that she did. There’s no indication he’s reluctant to eat the fruit, that his better judgment is overwhelmed by Eve's treachery, or even that he thinks about it at all. He says nothing and he takes no initiative. It’s merely a passive act of acquiescence.

Socrates will later describe the human soul as composed of three parts – the Thoughts of the Mind, the Emotions of the Heart, and the Needs and Appetites of the Body. He shows us that these parts are in a state of total chaos and disorder. To ‘perfect’ one’s soul means that each of these parts must perform its own proper task in a well-ordered harmony with the others.

In the story of Eden, which is a parable of our inner life and the need to evolve and perfect our soul, Adam represents the Mind, Eve represents the Heart, and the Serpent represents the Body. (This is typical ancient mythological symbolism: males = mind, females = heart, animals = body). In their proper alignment, the Mind should be the Active principle that governs the soul. The Body should the Passive principle which supports the efforts of the Mind. And the Heart should be the Reconciling principle that protects and nurtures the soul under the guidance of the Mind. But what happened in the Garden of Eden is that the appropriate ‘order’ became inverted. The serpent (the Body) interfered, took the active lead, and persuaded Eve (the Heart) to go along with its wishes. Adam (the Mind), silent and oblivious, passively joined in.

This was the real ‘sin’ that occurred in the Garden of Eden, and that recurs in each one of us. This is the ‘Original’ (in the sense of ‘fundamental’) sin – the sin of an inverted soul. It takes very little imagination to see that this allegory provides a complete and accurate description of our contemporary life – the pop culture, the greed, the obscenity. The Body’s appetites are completely in charge of what we do, the Heart’s emotions fawn over these cravings, and the Mind (at least in the sense of genuine Wisdom) sits back silently and lets it all continue. ‘Original Sin’ is not “something an evil woman did a long time ago”. Quite the contrary, we are all committing this sin right now. It is high time we stopped blaming ‘Eve’.

When God returns to the Garden of Eden, his instructions are really quite simple. If the soul wants to evolve, the Serpent must crawl on its belly – in other words, the Body must be Passive and focus on the Earth. Adam must “earn his bread through the sweat of his face” – in other words, the Mind (the "face") must make active efforts ("sweat") and take control. And Eve must “obey” her husband.

But this last statement should never have been twisted into a sexist command about social and marital relations. It’s an inner symbol which simply means that the Heart (in all of us) must be obedient to the intelligence of the Mind, not the cravings of the Body.

Andrew Cort is an expert on the inner message of Spiritual Awakening that is always ready to be found in the wonderful stories of the Bible and Greek Mythology. To receive several FREE GIFTS from Dr. Cort (a copy of Chapter One, ‘Making the Decision’, form his new book, THE DOOR IS OPEN; a copy of his article on RECONCILING SCIENCE AND RELIGION; and a complete version of the Bible’s erotic masterpiece, SONG OF SONGS , adapted as a Poetic Dialogue to be read out loud by lovers; as well as a subscription to his SPIRITUAL GROWTH NEWSLETER) click here http://www.andrewcort.com/Gifts . You can also learn more on his blog,Spiritualityand Religion.

Interested in buying the book? 

Amazon Paperback

Amazon Kindle

Website  http://www.spirituality-and-religion.com

Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/andrew.cort.3

Twitter  www.twitter.com/andrewcort

Goodreads  http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1409094.Andrew_Cort

Be sure to check out the next stops on the tour:

10/3  My Cozie Corner  Weekly Guest Post 4
10/4 Simply Infatuated   Weekly Guest Post  4
10/4 Reading, Writing and More  Weekly Guest Post 4
10/4    Kristy Centeno  Guest Blog  410/5  Fighting Monkey Press    Weekly Guest Post 4
10/5  The Bunnies Review   Weekly Guest Post 4

To follow the entire tour,  please click here.

Disclaimer:  I don't usually post a disclaimer on a guest post, but I am today.  Guest posts such as this do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of the owner of this blog.  This is guest post is for the sole purpose of promoting this book and creating a dialogue about various "religious" things.

I.O. Book Tours Presents "The Door is Open" by Andrew Court Weekly Guest Post 2

Welcome to Weekly Guest Post 2 of the book tour The Door is Open by Andrew Court.  Watch for a weekly guest post for the next few weeks on my site!  

THE GOD OF WINE

Since bread and wine are traditionally bound together as symbols of life-giving nourishment from the gods, it is not surprising that in ancient Greece Demeter, the goddess of the grain, was often worshipped together with Bacchus, the god of wine. Bacchus was the child of Zeus and a human mother. He is best known to us as the personification of wine and ecstasy. The worship of Bacchus was characterized by wild dancing, music, and madcap abandon.

Like other gods of vegetation Bacchus was believed to have died a violent death, but to have been brought back to life again. Zeus’ wife, the goddess Hera, hated this child born of a human mother and plotted his destruction. Knowing how she felt, Zeus entrusted young Bacchus to the care of guards that he thought he could trust. Hera, however, bribed the guards, and by amusing the boy with a mirror – which he stared into, becoming fascinated with his image – she lured him underground into a trap. The Titans, whom Zeus had imprisoned in the earth, were now co-conspirators with Hera, and they ambushed the boy, tore him to pieces, boiled his flesh, and ate it. But Athena, the goddess of Wisdom, who had shared in Hera’s treachery, now repented and saved the boy’s Heart. She brought it to Zeus, and confessed the whole sordid story. Enraged, Zeus blasted the Titans with a mighty thunderbolt, reducing them to ashes. He was then able to nurture the heart of Bacchus, and from the heart the boy was reborn.

Out of the ashes of the Titans, Zeus had Prometheus craft the Human Race. A composite creature, our lower nature is made of the remains of the Titans themselves (stardust), who had become wicked and distorted because of their long and bitter involvement in the depths of the material world to which Zeus had banished them. Our higher nature, however, comes from the burned remains of the god Bacchus, pieces of whom the Titans had devoured. It is for this reason that the Mysteries taught that suicide is a horrific crime, since every human being contains a portion of the god, and thus our body is his property and his temple and must always be treated reverentially.

Bacchus, a combination of Heaven (his father Zeus) and Earth (his human mother), was thus "of both worlds” – and he is thus a symbol of the Soul, which is also "of both worlds" (and so is Wine, which can produce either lunacy or ecstasy). Bacchus became spellbound by his image in the mirror, hypnotized by the illusory reflection of reality, and thus he was ensnared by the Titans who cut him up into fragments and scattered the pieces amongst themselves (which means, symbolically, that they scattered them everywhere).

In just this way the human soul is mesmerized and ensnared by the fascinating world of matter, and is fragmented and devoured by life, toward which it disperses its scattered attention (hence the need to practice meditation and learn to focus our attention). But all is not lost! When Zeus saw that the Titans, in a degraded caricature of their original generative purpose, were now scattering pieces of the divine idea throughout the lower world, he immediately destroyed them so that the divine idea would not be completely lost. From the ashes (dust) he created human beings, whose purpose is to preserve and nurture the Soul, their little piece of Bacchus, and eventually release it from the lower world of Matter back into the Heavens.

Andrew Cort is an expert on the inner message of Spiritual Awakening that is always ready to be found in the wonderful stories of the Bible and Greek Mythology. To receive several FREE GIFTS from Dr. Cort (a copy of Chapter One, ‘Making the Decision’, form his new book, THE DOOR IS OPEN; a copy of his article on RECONCILING SCIENCE AND RELIGION; and a complete version of the Bible’s erotic masterpiece, SONG OF SONGS , adapted as a Poetic Dialogue to be read out loud by lovers; as well as a subscription to his SPIRITUAL GROWTH NEWSLETER) click here http://www.andrewcort.com/Gifts . You can also learn more on his blog, Spiritualityand Religion.

 Website  http://www.spirituality-and-religion.com

Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/andrew.cort.3

Twitter  www.twitter.com/andrewcort

Goodreads  http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1409094.Andrew_Cort

Pick up your own copy here.

Be sure to check out even more the tour:

9/19  My Cozie Corner  Weekly Guest Post 2
9/20 Simply Infatuated    Weekly Guest Post 2
9/20 Reading, Writing and More  Weekly Guest Post 2
 9/21 The Bunnies Review   Weekly Guest Post 29/24  A Night's Dream of Books  Weekly Guest Post 3
9/24   My World  Weekly Guest Post  3

To follow the entire tour, click here.