UPDATING FAITH TO GROW IN SPIRIT
How spiritual research
and frontier psychic research
working together can help it
by Filippo Liverziani
C O N T E N T S
1. Unknown friends just round the corner
2. What is revealed to us
3. What is the reasoning of philosophy for
4. A common feeling is necessary not only to make progress in dialogue
but also to agree on the premises
5. The divorce between concept and being in western philosophy
6. Absolute assertions can only have the absolute of metaphysics as their object
and, together with it, the absolute of ideal beings of logic, that are constructions
of our mind, where perhaps we reflect something absolute that is within
ourselves
7. For a metaphysics of God
8. God does not want evil and neither does He allow it
9.Three classic types of attitude in the face of evil
10. Immature religiousness cannot stand the idea of a pure evil
11. God is indeed almighty, but might not that which contradicts His absolutely
simple nature; therefore He expresses Himself in a one and only eternal act
12. A God crucified in the present but triumphant in the ultimate future
13. A God that gives us everything (even if not immediately)
14. Not a simple return to God but the creation of a new absolute
15. In what sense do evil and death come from the sin of men?
16. Why the cross?
17.The Resurrection and Ascension of Christ figure of the universal Resurrection
and Ascension
18. The Virgin Mary as the figure of sanctified humanity
19. The cosmos and the same matter await deification
20. Real eternity and “bad” eternity
21.The eternal Consciousness that places all things into being in temporal
succession includes all human consciousnesses that are becoming and flo into
hat in the end
22. For a geometry of the point
23. We are isolated and unheeded only in appearance
24. We are always remembered by our loved ones
25. The sadness of living only for oneself
26. Egotism and its antidote
27. Humility of the saints and self-sufficiency of the mediocre people
28. The attitude of prayer
29. Prayer and faith
30. Let us free the content of prayer from trite concepts and obsolete images
31. The miracle: meaning, mechanism and limits
32. Can the relative achieve the absolute dimension without dissolving as relative?
33. Why should we repent
34. In forgiving, God does not change: it is man who changes
- Many are called, but few are chosen
- Simplicity and “bad" simplicity
- Orthodoxy from spiritual inertia
- The courage of taking the first step
- Hard times for the spirit
- Poverty in spirit and material poverty
- Christianity is not exalting pain
- A not very justified ethical relativism
- The real and full morality is loving God and therefore knowing and promoting creation
- “My Lord and my God!”
- To love others only for the love of God?
- What does "love your neighbour" actually mean
- The love of God, humanity, ascesis
- Humanism is also an imitation of God
- The real love of God is also knowledge, culture and action
- Why are mind and heart so limited in us?
- Gossip and interest
- To love is to show interest: the same goes for the love of God
- How one can also be great in one’s own small way
- To obey one’s “superiors” is to obey God?
- Is obedience to God an aim in itself or is it not rather the means to a spiritual aim that transcends it?
- «Useless talk»: what is it?
- One should never judge? On certain levels it appears to be actually necessary
- The need to prepare oneself for death
- In what sense one can “deserve” only during life on earth
- Private revelations on the Purgatory: how may we evaluate them?
- Hell and frontier psychic research
- Hell and damnation: a comparison between the Christian faith and mediumistic testimonies
- Hell revisited
- The final universal resurrection: reflections and comparisons
- Reincarnation and communion of the saints
- How can each one of us with all our limits reach the infinite perfection?
- Study, rationality and memory in the afterworld
- Pleasure in the perspective of the Christian faith and also of the mediumistic teachings
- The presence of Christ in the sacraments of the Church
70. In what way does Baptism save us
71. What can we say said about the “real presence” in the Eucharist?
72. The Holy Mass mutual total offer between people and God
73. The sacrament of Reconciliation: everlasting validity, necessary updating
74. Religion, blind faith and hypnotic rituals
75. A more deepened image of God for a more adult religiosity
76. Suggestive images for metaphysical meditation
1. Unknown friends just round the corner
These thoughts are confided – and also entrusted, because they carry them out – to our friends: to friends who are united to us by some kind of spiritual relationship; to friends with whom we can meet everyday and others who are geographically further away; finally, to virtual friends, because they are still unknown and as they say, "just round the corner".
Indeed, it sometimes happens that life makes us meet people who we completely ignored before. We would never have imagined it, and then, all of a sudden, when we least expect it, they have entered our lives. And it is as if we have known them forever. What unites us together
With so many acquired friends, and not only acquired but also potential, without knowing it we already shared something in common owing to the deep affinity that unites us. What do we have in common? Fundamentally, I would say, a huge fortune, an immense blessing. In different ways, we are all beneficiaries of a spiritual discovery. We are united by a profound sense of God: that sense of God that alone gives an absolute sense to everything, to our entire lives. In a more specific manner: this spiritual sensitiveness allows us to perceive the presence of God in more different ways, in more different realities. This is how God shows Himself to us in the variety of his manifestations. Our one and only merit is to trust: this is faith We all have our limits, we are all faulty and we are all sinners, everybody has his own troubles. However, we have a merit, at least this: to have opened ourselves to the best inspirations that come from deep down. Everybody has his own pain, his own misfortune, his own difficulties, but we are all united by one great good thing: by a fundamental new awareness. The Truth has revealed itself to us, though insofar as our faulty ability of receiving it. And we have opened ourselves to this revelation. We have trusted in it.This trust is faith. It is devoting oneself, it is giving oneself up. The revelation of the Absolute is not something one can capture, it is instead light we can only reflect. It comes to us from the Elusive. And we can only receive it and make ourselves transparent to it until we ourselves become light. Faith, to have trusted in it, is our only merit. The rest is blessing. Praise to our Creator!Faith is the trust in a truth that reveals itself on its own initiative It is useful to dwell upon the concept of faith, to insist on one or two fundamental points. As mentioned before, He who promises us all infinite well-being, perfection and happiness is an undoubtedly real God, who is however not demonstrable in exactly scientific terms. It is a God one can draw upon for faith.
Needless to say, faith is not mere judgement. It is the intuition of a truth. Of a truth that however we cannot capture, as likewise said.
Unlike the worldly realities that are more within our reach and offer matter to our objective scientific observations, the truths of faith reveal themselves to us from a transcendent sphere: we can only make them shine, by trusting in them. Faith, like trust.
This trust we have in a truth that descends to us from an ultramundane, transcendent sphere, which is in itself inaccessible, is precisely the act of faith: a spiritual act of will, but also and above all, of knowledge.
2. What is revealed to us
Let us try to explain to ourselves the contents of this revelation, of which we know to be the beneficiaries. We will gradually draft together a kind of well thought-out list, to sum it up in what we can call a real profession of faith.
From deep down inside ourselves, from the depth of our souls, God reveals Himself to us as the Living and as the Creator, as the absolute Truth, as our real absolute Self, as our Good and our Everything.
Furthermore, He shows Himself in every creature. Particularly in every human being. And then in every value: in every expression of truth, of good and of beauty.
Every time we ask ourselves what we have to do, or what we have to avoid, in the absolute sense, we feel the reality of an absolute Law and feel that it is always God that expresses Himself in the absolute imperative of the moral.
Therefore, every one of our accomplishments as men appears to us a small step towards the fulfilment of the kingdom of God, a small stone for its construction, a small help we offer God Himself for the accomplishment of his creative work.
That which reveals itself to us as the heart of all our knowledge is the Divinity. And so we discover the Law and the final End of our actions in the Divinity itself. In our spiritual sensitiveness, we literally feel surrounded by God, lovingly besieged.
3. What is the reasoning of philosophy for
We already have quite firm beliefs, because they are founded on experience: specifically, on the experience of the external world, on our way of seeing it; and above all, on our intimate experiences. An experience of faith is also possible: of that faith that "one trusts" to a truth, that reveals itself on its own initiative. If we already believe in something or we are already convinced of it, what use then is it to make philosophy?
Philosophy inspects our certainties in order to weigh them up and confirm them.
We may wonder: are they only beliefs and subjective opinions, or is their certainty real, is it objectively well-grounded?
And so we whittle our intimate beliefs down to a series of judgements that have been formulated in logical terms. And then we compare them: first of all to see if they are all consistent, if they all are coherent with one another; secondly, to see how much they are deducible from one another so that they can form demonstrative chains and make possible reasoning.
These are confirmations we give ourselves. However, there are those we try to give to others.
We need other people. And in this case, we need their consent and comfort, in order to make us feel less alone in our considerations, to give our reasons a term of comparison.
He who has a passion for the truth does not only want to draw from it for himself, but also wants to make it a present for others. Legitimate aspiration, when one expresses it without excessive presumptuousness and wants to accomplish it without fanaticism.
Actually, among the people with whom we converse, there are those whom – it is not important here to establish whether rightly or wrongly – we wish to convert to our idea. If we are convinced that certain ideas of theirs are questionable, our reasoning tries to put them in difficulty, by analysing their discussion, by dissecting it and combing it point by point in order to make them notice its contradictions.
To this pars destruens there should follow a pars construens, a positive proposal. One will try to deduce it by starting from the obvious things that are also evident for our interlocutor and hopefully for every possible reader.
One will show how the new steps of our discussion are already implied in the agreed starting point and are therefore deducible at least in some measure.
Not all steps are implicit and deducible strictly logically speaking. Some will require an effort to be made personally by our interlocutor in order to obtain a new insight.
Therefore, in the same way as us, he should open up his mind to receive new inspiration that will allow him to perceive something more. He should make himself available and open to receive the new truth from that which, deep down inside each one of us, is the revealing Source of every truth.
The reasoning we propose him will not be of the kind that forces our interlocutor's intellect to accomplish a new step; but it should in some way make him see that the new step is reasonable. It should make him see that in the light of common sense and sound reasonableness, the new step is probable, in other words, worthy of approval.
This is the purpose of that analysis, that is always and only minister of a dominating intuitive synthesis.
4. A common feeling is necessary
not only to make progress in dialogue
but also to agree on the premises
There are some steps of our reasoning that take up our spiritual sensitiveness. However, an intuitive commitment (not only intellectual) can be requested even only for formulating the premises: to agree with the interlocutor on the starting point, which the whole discussion will move on from.
Before anything else, a common intuitive commitment is requested so that the same problem we set ourselves with has a meaning: a meaning for us as well as for those with whom we start a discussion.
For those who do not have metaphysical sensitiveness, the entire metaphysical language is mute and any problem we want to set ourselves with in that area is also without meaning.
For example, let us try to ask ourselves what the first cause of everything is. The person we are speaking to may tell us that he is only used to contemplating intramundane causes, causes we can find in our world. In other words, only the phenomena of our empirical world, which cause other phenomena within this world.
As used as he is to only contemplating the causes of our world, the interlocutor frankly admits that he has no idea what an extramundane cause, a cause of the world as a whole, could be. He only knows partial causes; a total cause has no meaning whatsoever for him.
It is impossible to discuss with those who deny the principles and, above all, it is impossible to discuss with those who do not even feel the problems.
A philosophical discussion can only be had with those who share a minimum philosophical sensitiveness with us: needless to say, real philosophical sensitiveness. Therefore, we can have a religious discussion only with those who share a minimum of religious sensitiveness. On the contrary, with those who, in this sense, have nothing in common with us, it is impossible to even start a dialogue.
5. The divorce between concept and being
in western philosophy
In order to properly confirm our ideas and verify them, the first thing that needs to be done is to specify their meaning. This is when the ideas therefore turn into concepts. Each idea is specified by means of a definition.
Many ideas correspond, or one presumes they correspond, to existing realities. All existing beings come from a matrix that transcends this world. It is at the origin of them, but in some way it is beyond them, therefore for us it is mysterious.
Now to define is to clarify. Insofar as this definition work is carried out, mystery is always driven further out. If the worst comes to the worst, it would be eliminated, one would want to completely exclude it.
To want to define everything is great presumptuousness. It is what a certain philosophy tries to do, that was born in Greece and then develops in our western world.
The western philosophy is obviously well aware of the fact that it is impossible to define everything, in our imperfect condition as men. Such a philosophy is satisfied with defining some things, that we deem to be fundamental; however, this means defining them well: if not thoroughly, then indisputably.
What is man? What is God? What is every living species? What is every virtue? What is, in other words, the essence of things? How are they definable?
What little that can be said about it must be absolutely true and certain. One must be able to give it a correct and exact definition, that in its own limits, excludes every possible doubt.
To define any existing reality in this manner means capturing its secret; it means capturing the formula that expresses the essence of that reality.
To define any existing reality in this manner is a manipulating and magical operation. It is a violation of the reality, depriving it of its mystery, taking it away from its divine transcendent matrix, from its other world.
This reality reduced to a concept is like a flower that has been pulled from or cut off its plant. One knows that a picked flower is like a kind of corpse that starts to decompose. (It must be nevertheless pointed out, even if the image of it may disturb the sensitiveness of many romantic people and sweethearts who play around with these tiny corpses, exchanging them as gifts).
In this sense, to define anything which exists in this world is like amputating it from its being, to reduce it to a dead concept.
One manipulates a network of increasingly abstract ideas that are uprooted from their being, exchanging them for their corresponding realities. However, the ideas and concepts of those original realities are nothing more than their countermarks.