Language of Creation Session 1
2023-10-27 .. 2024-02-07
2023-10-27
Ch 1
Ch 2
Ch 3
Ch 4
Ch 5
No Notes
2023-11-03
Ch 5
Ch 6
Ch 7
Ch 8
Ch 9
No Notes
2023-11-10
Ch 10
Ch 11
Ch 12
Ch 13
Ch 14
No Notes
2023-11-17
Ch 14
Ch 15
Ch 16
Ch 17
Ch 18
Adam bridges Heaven and Earth (Christ)
Cosmos shaped for humanity
Adam’s role is to bring heaven (divine knowledge, spiritual principles)
Manna (Heaven) and Quails (Earth)
Manna measured out daily, to teach the Israelites/humans
Manna light, thin, airy, bright, beginning of the morning. Compared to condensation. Ready to eat. “Fine” flour condensed into weightier bread.
Ascent of quails: meat must be prepared for consumption, arrived at “night”; Earth rising to feed Israel. Meat is prepared by removal and refinement.
Meaning > Matter ? But bring them together in humanity?
Meaning (comes down thru condensation) and Matter (comes up thru refinement)
Light and Dark
Bread as a miracle food: wheat alone, or even wheat, water, yeast, will not sustain, but the mixture and working creat a food
Pagan ritual of a god from dirt and opening of their nostrils to breathe, Creation is God creating man and breathing into nostrils. Inversion. Gollum
Why God breathed into “nostrils”? You can breathe in via mouth. But food enters mouth also. Nose is for breath alone. Later, Matthieu describes nose as a symbol of discernment (distinguishing by smell); Proverbs and a ring in harlots nose
Manna and “Give us this day, our daily bread”
Darkness and Rest
Manna and Mary: some parable about her recognition of God’s contributions thru others
Cosmic Mediators: Naming/Raising Animals, Hosting Angels (see Abraham)
Entertaining Angels in NT; hospitality
Judges 13: Birth of Samson and offering food to angel, but angel does not eat, offering is presented to the Lord, and angel ascends in the flame
Seed (promised birth) and meat offering meal (Abraham, Manoah)
Angels herald the birth of Isaac, Samson, and Jesus
Meat as sacrifice and then eaten (like Temple system)
Adam ate meat? Monks do not, pre-Fall, pre-Flood; animals cannot come near the Mountain of God in Exodus
Not eating animals is a symbol of not eating below us. In Hades, angels eat humans. Screwtape Letters: demons consume the souls
Why do certain offerings get accepted and others do not? Cain/Abel, Sarah’s bread offering?
Bread for the Saints in Orthodox churches
Eating is something integrating and becoming part of something else. Knowing is like sex, integrating things. Do not be “joined” with a harlot
How do subtle bodies consume? Pride is feeding or giving body to a vice/demon
Satan envious of Adam as intermediary between heaven and earth
“Place the Bread of the Presence on the table to remain before me at all times.” - Exo 25:30
When Adam names the animals, is he drawing down pre-existing names from heaven, or is he “creating” them himself using other knowledge he has pulled down? In other words, is Adam discovering or creating or both?
Andrew: Adam vs ideologues
Thomas: when you mentioned “maths”, you said humans transcend it (and I agree), but are you saying humans have brought maths into the world? How do we know our maths are not the production of ideologues vs. Godly ppl?
Andrew: Eve is necessary to prevent Adam from becoming an ideologue
2023-12-18
Ch 29
Ch 30
Space/Geography: North (Heaven), Center (Humans), South (Earth).
North (Japeth), Center (Seth), South (Ham)
Guns, Germs, and Steel (Diamond): easier to travel East/West (no climate changes)
USA is End of the World but acting like center. Negatively enabling Israel (Head of Nations). Ethiopia properly embodies the End of the World. It also dismantles the racial power argument. USA should learn/empower Ethiopia?
Lebanon, Nebraska is center of Continental US
People at the Ends of the World “arrived”
Nebachadnezzar’s statue: Gold thru Clay
Northern Tribes wiped out
Idol worship occurred in mountains in the North (Mt Hernon?)
Head (Heaven), Center (Heart), Body (Earth)
Anointing (Appointing) comes down from Heaven to Earth, Tithing (Taxes) are offered up from Earth to Heaven
Earthy = Embodied!!
Praying at scale: personal, family, community, society, and up
Also, praying across time: parishes, churches praying the same prayers on schedule, holidays
Also, praying individually, as a family, as a church, as The Church
Genesis 3:16 - The Seed of Eve will crush the serpent’s head and serpent will bruise His heel
2024-01-02
Ch 31
Ch 32
No Notes
2024-01-09
Ch 33
Ch 34
Ch 35
Ch 36
The purpose of the universe in biblical cosmology is knowledge from the union of heaven and earth - Primitive uncertainty - Advanced certainty (physical reality correctly expresses and supports spiritual meaning)
“Dry Land” (Space) is when language (theory, heaven) and fact (practice/experience, earth) meet
“Confusion” emerges when no clear connection can be established between meaning and fact. When there is no agreement between Heaven and Earth, “water” (Time, Chaos) fills the gap.
Ryan: think about times when the facts (earth) and experiences of life don’t match your theory (heaven) of existence…
Collin: it’s like wandering in the desert; a stumbling stone is a welcome sight
Water: not clear like heaven, while also not solid like earth
“Divination” is a primitive practice associated with “time” and its mysterious
Space and Time exist at different scales of reality?
Water “symbolizes” confusion but does not refer to any actual change, only the losing of agreement between heaven and earth (where everything appears foreign
Foundation (Stable Space) vs. Stumbling Stone (Unstable Time). Christ is referred to as the “Stumbling Stone” bc he is a cause of instability and “change” to the ungodly religious system of his day
Remainders: “when God is supposed to be the single source of all manifestation, the mere presence of a remainder is an influence of subversion” (ch35, p132)
Simply stated, change means turning into something else, whereas formation means producing a greater version of something
- One person’s formation might be another person’s transformation, depending on their respective identities
SOME EXAMPLES AND DISCUSSION
Thomas: negative examples of space are where heaven (theory) and earth (practice) meet in an ungodly way. eg, Egypt, Pharaoh
Edward: sleep is an example of good “time”; time as renewal is one of the most positive senses of time
Thomas: how could one orient their life such that even if heaven (theory of your personal purpose) meets earth (successful experience), that you prevent yourself from stabilizing on an UNGODLY space
Stephen: embrace the “confusion”. It is risky and may capture you, but it may keep you from an a stable, but incorrect “space”
BREAKOUT ROOM 1
Ryan: it’s important to allow for the remainder and the margin to exist for the sake of renewal
Thomas: What does “when God is supposed to be the single source…” (ch35, pg132) mean?
Collin: Tribe of Dan as a stumbling stone. Settle in the North (do not drive out false gods, Philistines in the North); Samson from Tribe of Dan (Matthieu: “spirit of Antichrist comes before Christ” and also “Samson is the best example of Christ”)
Thomas: Tribe of Dan set up an unauthorized place of worship in the north (helping to lead Israel astray from God). Irenaeus cites Jeremiah 8:16 and Revelations 7:5-7 foreboding that Antichrist will come from the Tribe of Dan
Thomas: Judges are stumbling stones who drive out remainders, so sometimes purity matters (like a vaccine? remainder driving out remainder)
Collin: Samson is marrying a foreigner to overthrow the foreigners. The (uncut) Nazarite is taking on the uncut Philistines. Remainder is supposed to become a crown? The king subdues but won’t submit to the original principle. Time aids the king, but why? Dan and Philistines were coming together in a mixture. God “stirs up” (creation language) Samson against the Philistines. Danites wonder why they cannot conquer the land from the Philistines, so Samson goes and marries the Philistines, but by the end of the story Samson realizes that he is the problem. He is emblematic of Israel joining themselves to their enemies, so he ultimately must sacrifice himself. Samson is buried “with his fathers”.
Lion and Honey: the lion is against Samson as a stumbling stone, but is renewed by the honey
Samson’s birth and the hosting of the angel. The angel seems to accept the meal offering of Samson’s parents. His name means: “a ray of light” (a light, subtle body), yet he is also a giant. Samson’s death resembles an offering
OTHER BREAKOUT ROOMS:
Stephen: Time and Space as a dialectic
Mark: Dreams are examples of positive divinations
Thomas: Examples of positive active divination? Gideon and the fleece? Urim and Thumim (Stephen: becomes negative when they overly rely on it)
Collin: Circumstantial (Fact) vs. Established (Theory) Knowledge?
Stephen: established knowledge found empirically vs. circumstantial (like drawing lots or divination)
Collin: Eureka example: attempting to measure the volume of a crown (via theory), has to step away (Stephen: into exile) and take a bath, and then realizes a solution from his body (earth?)
Thomas: Both circumstantial and established knowledge bridge meaning and matter (heaven and earth), but in different ways:
- Circumstantial is like water, opaque but still may be correct (or incorrect). Examples: ancient myths and narrative stories passed down, authorship uncertain, but convey knowledge. Or AI systems of today where they work incredibly well, but it’s not always clear why
- Established knowledge is clear, like standing at the top of a mountain (space) and seeing clearly in thin air. However it may still be incorrect (or correct). Examples: repeatable scientific experiments with deterministic outcomes
Collin: Subtle bodies as subtle mediators? Like reaching negatively for TKGB?
2024-01-16
Ch 37
Ch 38
Ch 39
Ch 40
Ch 41
Ch 42
Andrew: example of leadership “separating opposites as an act of ‘establishing space’”; witnessed someone having consistently successful outcomes based on separating “chaotic” situations (and disputes between opposites)
Thomas: Mixture/Hybridization as an example of TKGB? It can be transmuted into a Tree of Life, or it could lead to exile. By creating ethnicities, God enabled ethnic mixture. Like Adam, Israel was not ready to eat of that fruit. Solomon tried (and failed?). It seems right for us today, and we even see genetic benefits, etc…
Ryan: balance between incest and foreign wives
Andrew: Moses had a mixed marriage. Zipporah was a foreign element meant to “renew”. God uses Moses for renewal, and to “expand” Israel
Andrew: “The Wheel” (Indirect Knowledge). Concealment. Ex. Esther - God is not mentioned (concealed), but God (via Esther) turns the tables on Mordechai and the people are saved
Fire cuts through confusion with light and dries up the earth with heat; Water confuses heaven and earth into fog and mire
- (p122 diagram is also used for “grace” on 224)
Uncut stone is a symbol of the influence of time by God to overturn spatial reality (Christ as stumbling stone that destroys the Daniel statue (world kingdoms) and is established as the “corner/foundation stone” - Daniel 2:31-35)
- God is the creator of BOTH time (stumbling stone) and space (foundation stone)
Thomas: I want to associate symbols with the segments of Daniel’s statue. Head of Gold (Heaven) down to feet of iron/clay (Earth), but they are chronological kingdoms in actual time. (Christ’s genealogy also like this).
Ryan: Not mutually exclusive (can be both symbolic and occur in ordered time - chronos)
Ryan:
- Time v Space
- Continuous v Discrete
- Change v Stability
- Continuity v Discontinuity
- Removing opposites and intermediate states v Separating Opposites and creating intermediate states
- Hybridization v Specialization
- Creates Instability v Creates stability
- Strange mixture v Definite species
- Incorporating margin v Exiling margin
- Concealed v Revealed
- Axle v Pillar
- Wheel v House
- Indirect knowledge v Direct knowledge
- Flooded land/foreign land v Dry land/familiar land
- God’s hidden identity and action v God’s revealed identity and action
- Leniency v Rigor
- Completeness and inconsistency v Consistency and incompleteness
- Loose mediation v Firm mediation
- Water v Fire
- Stumbling stone v Foundation stone
- Unanswered riddle/knowledge v Answered riddle/knowledge
- Hybrid cherub v Square Cherub
- Silence v Speech
- Pointless v Pointy
BREAKOUT ROOM 2
Stephen: the effort to not think of flood land vs dry space as one “better” than the other. (God uses confusion for His purposes and for His people).
Ryan: Good and Bad dichotomy is so primitive/instinctual that it is hard to break out of at times (puzzle like TKGB)
Mark: the patterns are sometimes more fundamental than the moralities
Thomas: pendulum is a secular symbol for time (controlled opposition)
Ryan: the desire for space and clarity, but the voice that says: “make sure you’re on the correct path!”
Thomas: optionality? Association with time in some way
Ryan: like wandering in a foreign land; living in a question (confused state); swimming in waters; observing all of the question marks. It can be done well.
Ryan: often concerned about confusing time and earth
MAIN ROOM
Music sends the world spinning, but also is for renewal
BREAKOUT ROOM 2
Ryan: Work and Rest, and various types of rest
Stephen: too much rest is not ultimately restful
Thomas: work and rest must be informed by meaning, otherwise they are arbitrary. “Rest more”, “Work more”, are irrelevant divorced from meaning
Collin: these symbols aren’t just metaphors, but manifestations of the axis of space and time on the human scale. For ex: the car alienating us from our neighborhoods
Ryan: Proverbs points to Space; Ecclesiastes points to Time
Ryan: “innoculation” against the flood
Mark: the Sabbath serves that purpose. It is a renewal.
2024-01-23
Ch 43
Ch 44
Ch 45
Ch 46
Ch 47
Ch 48
Thomas: Prodigal Son is an example of a “cyclical” pattern of “total waste” vs “efficiency”. The youngest son left home and returned back home (even worse off).
Kelly: 6 is the first perfect number (then 28, then 496, then…) bc divisible by its parts (but 7 is demonstration that the “remainder” is so important)
Jenifer: butterflies seem to fly in an inefficient path (like God leading our lives)
Thomas: these patterns are neither good nor bad (I prefer straight path of efficiency, but it’s foolish to take the straight path to Hell
BREAKOUT ROOM 1
Thomas: Examples of time as renewal?
Stephen: examples of renewal are “not work” (naps, drinks with friends), “holidays” Jenifer: Sabbath and worship and times apart with God
Joshua: cognitive science research: “9 dot problem”. If you insert some distraction, it helps you reframe (maximal efficiency prevents a reframing)
Thomas: Is time random? Examples of selection a potential political candidate at random (feels like it cannot be worse than current system of space)
Stephen: time is something you can seek out
Joshua: something may seem random to you and not be random (to a higher level?). Conspiracy.
Jenifer: children need random motion to learn to walk. Artists also need to have an aspect of “play”
Stephen: space is not moving, everything determined; time is optionality. It is a question, an enigma
Thomas: Is time/space always in the extreme; discrete? (time is turning a thing into its opposite)? - Stephen: the extremes are only examples, but the narratives are a blend of both - Joshua: Christ and saints tell us to “remember our death” (as a full acceptance of time) - Stephen: angels do not have the gift of time, change, repentance
Jenifer: the Cherubim guarding the Tree of Life to prevent Adam and Eve from being locked into “space”. Death is the consequence, but time is given as a gift of repentance. We can eat of the Tree of Life in Revelation
Thomas: if we talk about navigating between time and space, then we should also consider that there may not be a perfect optimum for individuals, or even an individual during their lifetime. Controversial take: Enlightenment should not be purified, but kept on margins. Protestantism should also be kept (!), but probably on the margins (or at least most of the time, and centered during certain times)
Joshua: taking the foreign, outside in is an example of transmuting the TKGB into a Tree of Life (riches from Egypt)
Jenifer: connection to Christ enables us to walk out these paths properly
Thomas: When taking from the TKGB, you better be right! Like Abraham offering Isaac.
Stephen: that is the importance of community (a group of people with a shared meaning)
Jenifer: the example of raising children in community
2024-01-30
Ch 49
Ch 50
Ch 51
Ch 52
Sabbath: - p156 (digital) The Meta-Space diagram (only shows up on p249, p276, and p279) - The answer to the riddle of work vs. rest - Sabbath answers too much rest (laziness) bc it is a reminder of the “meaning” of rest - Sabbath answers too much work bc it is a reminder of a higher meaning, and the purpose and meaning of work - Diagram on p276 (digital) is the same as p279 ? (Both diagrams represent Meta-Space?)
Crown of Time: - Ryan: Glory - Joshua: Crown of Thorns and The Fall
Is this a shoe-horning or back-dooring of dualism (“yin and yang” )?
BREAKOUT ROOM 1
To understand this symbolism, it is important to remember that the Sabbath is essentially a peace agreement between ‘space’ and ‘time.’ This covenant guards against the extreme powers of absurdity, confusion, and pointless change, and the extreme powers of reason, purity, and productive stability. As a seal, it keeps the floodwaters from leaking back into space. As an ornament, it prevents reason from force- fully integrating all that is pointless, fluid, or strange.
Star Wars as a stumbling stone? Light and Dark vs. John 1:1
WW2
Family dynamics: - Family order, deception (conspiracy), hidden time (remainder) - Entropy: if you’re not actively building/establishing, then time has its inevitable effect - Example of a family patriarch not actively uniting and directing the family (they wander away) - Ruth: an example of leaving her family; tradition that Orpah (who went back) became the grandmother of Goliath - In exile: Disobedience, faithfulness, opportunity for restoration - Seed as principal and a plant that leans towards sunlight. We must align our principal to God - Church as Family: how to renew vs. ?
Examples in the Bible of collaborative renewal? Israel as a nation
2024-02-07
Ch 69
Blood (ch54) and the Cycle of Time (obvious for females); blood is a “refreshing” - multiple times in night blood rushes back into areas (ie, penis and “morning wood”): https://youtube.com/shorts/8qziPdsnLt0?si=HmsqsGj1RpjUzEBi
- Mary: Sister has a low blood level (3 vs 13-14?); similar to Revelation where there is no need for the sea (time) bc of the perfect/divine space - it is a miracle (divine intervention) that her body does not require the same degree of renewal? People from all over the world are actively praying for her
https://the-symbolic-world.circle.so/c/symbolism-questions/the-life-is-in-the-blood
Brian: The bigger the Space, the more you have to “sacrifice”
Thomas: on an individual level?
William: suicide?
William: w.r.t. to Blood Vengeance
- Campfire protects you but also makes you known
- Beginning of society is like a campfire. With many little societies, there are lights all over the forest
- Fire and sacrifice to higher principalities
Per not wanting to “announce yourself”:
- Dark Forest hypothesis (Three-Body Problem)
- Pseudo-anonymous accounts on social media
- Algorithms siloing groups of people
- Astroturf (fake “announcements” of identity)
- Doxxing (being “announced” against your will)
- Relationship with “Naming”
Ancient practice of “sacrifice” to higher principalitiess
- Where did it go? Christ’s Kingdom Space
- Thomas: India?
William: not unified, pagan parades, TukTuk’s had a pantheon of gods, Jews who travel to Goa, schizophrenia symbol of constantly changing principalities - William: Named and Unnamed principality
Narcissism as symbol: - People do not acknowledge that this sort of real evil exists - Grandiose sense of self worth, no ability to empathize - Brian: they should be “cut off” (for the purpose of repentance in order for true integration) - Thomas: suppose you could identify these people at birth, how could they be leveraged for renewal (without harming others)? - Not born with it like sociopathy; it comes from bad parents - King Saul
Psychopathy:
- Without conscience? Symbol of a soul that cannot be saved
Schizophrenia as symbol?
- Multiplicity of voices
- Conspiracy
Exile of living in a society that defends harmful remainders; it’s a confusion - Telling the truth is considered rude, crazy - Feminine PoV - Brian: Goal is to achieve good outcomes via inadvertent routes toward the good - God is present and works in supernatural ways in exile (Abraham, Joseph, Daniel, etc…)
??
Ch 83
Ch 84
No Notes