Maybe if we used the phrase 'mystery ingredient' instead of the word God we'd have a clearer idea of how this intangible force operates as a catalyst throuout the universe. Part of the issue is how words interact with perceptions. It is very hard to pay tribute to an element whose scope is so far outside what humans can conceptualise.
Today as a result of evidence-based materialistic science we have lost touch with vocabulary that evolved to express emotions involved in collective aspiration. If we use words like worshipping, rejoicing, beseeching (praying even) the image most of us will have is of addressing them to another human or possibly projecting them randomly into the ether.
The discourse of the media since Peter Cook has been to ridicule those big old-fashioned concepts which the public buildings of previous ages express, because their meaning has largely been lost. Yet their effective extinction has brought us no greater joy. More fun perhaps, a bit more pleasure, but no lasting joy.
I saw 2 ads y/day: 'master a craft in a weekend' & 'understand Windows XP'. No doubt these will recruit well, we're at ease in the conceptual world; but in the perceptual world it's all a bit more murky. Which organisation really has the key helping us understand the meaning of life? Even saying that sound like a joke today. Could you /Would you build a great confident cathedral to a 'mystery ingredient'? How do we catch the tail of that most elusive of mysteries, the validation of our own existence? Because of this incomplete awareness in western society which identifies 'reality' entirely thou materialistic criteria, we have evolved a semantic sense-perception that does not include /cannot comprehend the supra-rational aspects of the existence. We've lost the plot because mainstream sense-awareness /vocabulary focuses on concepts not percepts.
You could say by emphasising the conceptual & objective at the expense of the perceptual & subjective orthodox christianity has given us science, technology & our mental prowess. Whereas the unorthodox churches, & their pagan successors, have compensated by emphasising the perceptual & subjective – which was at once more successful in giving the heart primacy (introjection), yet has been less successful in providing the quality of structure & projection which creates the aesthetic conditions for the longevity of a thought-form.
An article on ZNet notes the 80th birthday of Playboy creator Hugh Hefner. When we note the exponential spread of pornography -of which he was the public face- it is plain that something is amiss with a collective psyche which can objectify & degrade the feminine in this way. It's not that I haven't used pornography & don't understand its allure, but I think we must see it in an overall social context where natural relationships between men & women are often heavily circumcised - yes, I use that word deliberately.
How is this part of the 'mystery ingredient'? Well perhaps because nowadays more than ever we men have come to expect to receive our highs (endorphin release) throu sex &/or drugs without engaging with any 'otherness'. And by so doing, and thinking ourselves so clever for managing to do it, we miss the entire point of existence, namely mutuality. For it is in mutuality that the 'mystery ingredient' is most clearly sensed.
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