Reexamination of prayer and worship

[Harbal]

Prayer and worship reside in the habitation of devils.

It's escaped again. Did somebody forget to close a gate or something.

[Obvious Leo]

Guys..... I'm looking at a tree and describing it to y'all cave dwellers. I get Plato fully now.

You must reach for your hemlock immediately and without hesitation. Once you get Plato all hope is lost.

[Jaded Sage]

Anyone read The Idea of Holy? What most of us meam by the word worship involves "creature feeling" which is a feeling of inferiority in the presence of the creator. And dependence and lowliness. True worship doesn't involve that.

[Obvious Leo]

Anyone read The Idea of Holy? What most of us meam by the word worship involves "creature feeling" which is a feeling of inferiority in the presence of the creator. And dependence and lowliness. True worship doesn't involve that.

How do you propose to have a meaningful conversation with anybody if you decide to apply non-standard meanings to the words you use and then don't even take the trouble to explain yourself? Prayer and worship are well understood constructs, even to the non-believer, so what could you hope to gain by pasting such an obvious target onto your own forehead?

[Jaded Sage]

For those who didn't get the tree thing.

Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave”: A Summary

Socrates: “Why do people think philosophy is bullshit? Let me put it this way - imagine you’re in a cave, all chained up so you can’t turn your body at all, and all you get to look at is this one wall. Some assholes behind you are making shadow puppets using the light from a fire and making echo noises and that’s all you or anyone else chained up has seen or heard all your life. Sounds terrible, right? Except it’s all you’ve ever known, shadows and echoes, and that’s your whole world - there’s no way you could know that, really, you’re watching a slightly-improved M. Night Shyamalan film.
"In fact, you get pretty good at understanding how the patterns in the show work, and everyone else chained up is like, ‘Holy shit bro, how did you know that that tree was going to fall on that guy?’ and you’re like, 'It’s because I fucking pay attention and I’m smart as shit.’ You’re the smartest of the chained, and they all revere you."
Glaucon: "But Socrates, a tree didn’t really hit a guy. It’s all shadows."
Socrates: "No shit, Glaucon, but you don’t know that. You think the shadows are real things. Everyone does. Now shut up and let me finish.
"So eventually, someone comes and unchains you and drags you out of the cave. At first you’d say, 'Seriously, what the fuck is going on?!’ Well, actually, at first you’d say, 'HOLY SHIT MY EYES’ and you’d want to go back to the safe, familiar shadows. But even once your eyes worked you wouldn’t believe them, because everything you ever thought was real is gone. You’d look at a tree, and say 'That’s not a tree. I know trees. And you, sir, are no tree. THAT DOWN THERE is a tree.’ But you’re wrong. Down there is a shadow of a tree.
"Slowly, as your eyes got better, you’d see more and more shit. Eventually, you’d see the sun, and realize that it’s the source of all light. You can’t see shit without the sun. And eventually, you’d figure it out. Something would click in your brain: 'oh, shit, that IS a tree. Fuck me. So… nothing in the cave was real? I feel like such an asshole.’ But it’s not your fault, so don’t be so hard on yourself.
"Finally you’d want to go down and tell everyone about everything you’ve discovered. Except, and here’s the hilarious part, they think you’ve gone fucking crazy. You’d say, 'Guys, real trees are green!’ and they’d say, 'What the fuck is green? THAT is a tree over there.’ And you’d squint and look at the wall, but you know you’re fucked because now you’re used to having sunlight, and now you can’t see shit. So they’d laugh at you, and agree that wherever it was that you went, no one should go there because it turns people into dickheads.
"Philosophy, same thing. The soul ascends and apprehends the forms, the nature of everything, and eventually the very Idea of Good that gives light to everything else. And then the philosopher has to go back to the cave and try to explain it to people who don’t even know what Green is, to say nothing of the Good. But the philosopher didn’t make up the Good, it was always there, and the only way to really make sense of it is to uncover it for yourself. You can’t force knowledge into a dumbass any more than you can force sight into a blind man.
"So if you want to learn, be prepared for a difficult journey, and be prepared to make some mistakes. That’s okay, it’s all part of the process. True knowledge must be obtained the hard way, and some people just don’t want to see the light.”

[Harbal]

And the moral of this story is: Being chained up in a cave turns you into a foul mouthed moron.

[Jaded Sage]

Maybe, but the point was that this has been a big moment for me.

[Lacewing]

“The Allegory of the Cave”: A Summary

Despite all the crazy-ass swearing, I could see the points you were making with the story -- and there were two things that came to my mind based on my experience/perspective:

First, as soon as we realize we were in a cave, it might be useful to consider that there must still be more to see even beyond the new place we think we've arrived. It seems like people always want to think they have "arrived" at the true point of knowing... when logic would tell us, it's just ONE MORE SPACE (one more perspective). And that leads to my second thing...

Acquiring knowledge or awareness is not necessarily a type of "graduation" or hierarchical process... it could be all over the map and in the least likely of people and places. There could be a tribe member in Bunga Bunga who is vastly more aware/conscious than a computer programmer who is pretty much focused in a particular art/world.

So my point is to say that "leaving one cave" does not guarantee that one hasn't simply wandered into another cave that's just different... and it may or may not be any better. Yes, it is frustrating to want to share other perspectives with people, only to have them glaze over and drool. But that's where it becomes helpful to have a sense of humor, and compassion, and love... because we are all drooling fools to a certain degree.

I think we have to enjoy the exhilaration of our own "evolvement/unfolding", and see what we can do with that. If we want others to give us recognition for it... then I think we greatly risk becoming an even bigger fool than we think we were "before". And that's what's so fascinating to me. It seems that people who think they know so much can totally send themselves back to the bottom of their own ladder... because it's about PROCESS and motion... it's not about solid, significant spaces or attainment. It's about attunement which is not based on a "ladder" or on anything in particular -- it can happen anywhere, anytime, at any age.

That's my guess!

[Jaded Sage]

I could see the points you were making.

I think I agree. Only objection is because part was left out. First you see shadows, then figurines causing the shadows, then a reflection of an object, then an object itself.

So: tree, reflection of tree in water, clay figurine of tree, shadow of clay figurine of tree on the wall.

The tree (or the object) is the most real and each one is less real.

So, it's not from cave to cave. It's a progression.


I don't want to sound like a putz or jerk, but it's unmistakeable when you get there. Not to say you won't have many false awakenings, where you think you have reached the peak. I had many. But when you look back, you can see you were always there the whole time. That's why the Buddhists say, "Look within. Thou art the Buddha." The light from the sun was always on the cave wall a little bit. It just increases over time.


Ps. You can find this summary and many others like it at the website philosophybro.com

[Lacewing]

It's a progression / ...it's unmistakeable when you get there / ...many false awakenings /... I had many /...But when you look back, you can see you were always there the whole time.

Then it cannot really be a progression if you're always there. It just FEELS like a different space... or like you've accomplished something... and yet, it may be STILL another cave (which you will see at some point from another perspective). That was my point. And it's okay that that's what it is. Different perspectives are just that.

You seem to be identifying your past awakenings as false -- which perhaps indicates that you think you're having a real one now. Why do they have to be identified as such? Why does there need to be this sense of "progress"... and "now I've arrived"? Progress to where? Where are we going? Isn't it all really happening in each moment, and isn't each moment full of potential (some of it realized and some of it not)? Can that be enough?

[Jaded Sage]

The increasing of the light is the progression.

[thedoc]

Most people don't see what is really in front of them and can't see the difference between illusion and the real thing.

[Jaded Sage]

I think it's rather worse than that, unfortunately. Most consider the real fake, and the fake real. The latter being worse.

[thedoc]

I know this might seem a rather mundane example, but years ago I got into a discussion with several other people about the color of a Yield sign, and everyone insisted that it was yellow with black lettering. The interesting fact is that the color was changed 15 years before that and attrition would have eliminated all the old signs many years before I asked the question. Anyone who drives in the US would have passed one of the new signs and only not seeing what is there, and seeing what is expected, could account for their insistence that the sign was still yellow and black. BTW, I first noticed the change in color the year it was changed, 1965 on the Pa. turnpike.

[Immanuel Can]

Anyone read The Idea of Holy? What most of us meam by the word worship involves "creature feeling" which is a feeling of inferiority in the presence of the creator. And dependence and lowliness. True worship doesn't involve that.

Maybe part of the problem is that you're looking for some clarity from the common understanding of these ideas, and I think t's fair to say that they are activities which many modern people do rarely or not at all. Thus, I think that what you're most likely to get is a fair bit of ridicule from those for whom the concepts are completely alien -- a result which you can see you've already achieved -- and even from those who have some passing familiarity with the concepts, you're likely to get more of a sort of "free association" response, a sort of "what I think worship/prayer mean to me," which might not be particularly informative or result in any consensus at all.

After all, asking someone who has never experienced "worship" what "worship" is would be rather like asking someone who has never been to Paris how he likes the Louvre...he could probably only tell you what he supposes other people have experience there. And that might not be the most accurate way to proceed.

A more grounded way might be to look at what is meant by the term in particular traditions. And if so, I can offer you this piece of the puzzle: that Biblically, "worship" is proskuneo (Greek), an idiomatic coinage meaning to "do reverence toward" something. In Christian traditions, prayer is identified as one possible means toward worship, but prayer is not identical to worship. The one can occur without the other also happening.

In bringing in the idea of "holy," of course, you introduce an additional term...