> Sorry, John and Angela. I enjoy reading your thoughts, > especially your personal experiences, and I like to think > Christianity offers spiritual insights, but I cannot buy > the notion that Christianity (by which you appear to > mean Catholicism) leads to, let alone actively promotes, > self realization. If such were the case, the amount of > time Christianity has existed and the number of > Christians that have lived would have generated more > enlightened people than it has apparently produced. > As holobuda put it in another post in this thread:
Perhaps you're putting self-realization in such a high pedestal that most people cannot reach it. If such were the case, there would not be too many people who can enter heaven. This fact alone is a barrier to self-realization. IMO, ordinary people can enter paradise through humility. It does not require years of effort and strain doing severe austerity. The very act of leading a just life (not merely human existence) for most people is the yoga itself that could qualify a person for heavenly reward. This could lead to more questions and debate. But that's for another day. As far as "family values" are concerned, the term should be applied in a holistic way. It is not strictly for the preservation of the immediate family members and the continuation of the species. The term is really describing dharma, in using the vedic equivalent. That is, the term involves ones own self, children, and religion, particularly one's personal Deity (using a generic term). In other words, there is a triune relationship in nature which could be interpreted as the relationship of the Christian understanding of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. And guess what? This relationship is not so dissimilar from MMY's paradigm of the Rishi- Devata-Chandas unity.
