During the session, I found these comments quite amazing:
The Life is religion quote came to mind:
And also what Laura has written about many times regarding the marriage between science and mysticism/religion. I can't speak for the whole group, but realized that up until this past year, that had remained a theory for me. Having grown up in a 1/2 catholic, 1/2 atheist family, early on I had already made my own "sauce" of both, just to be able to make them coexist. But it was always vague. How do you really combine them, and at the same time have faith and "belief"?
I realized that with this most recent research, we can bypass a) the religious stupidity that says "Never question God and believe blindly, and obey", and b) the science stupidity that unless you see something, and it is material, nothing else exists.
It's like feeling religious in a different way. If we can see and marvel at the microscopic manifestations of "God" in this reality, and nothing but an "intelligent design" explains them, then "God" exists, and you can be sure of it. You can question him, study him, even if it has to be within the many limitations we have in this reality and at our level of being. Even being okay with not knowing everything. But it brings the certainly that "God is in the air". In the same token, science is essential, because it allows for bservation, for "paying attention right and left".
I don't know about others, but I can say for myself that many times I felt sad at the idea of not having any "beliefs" (not false beliefs, but a belief in something objective even). Even faith was kind of hard to maintain, sometimes. That brought despair, as in "what's the point?" Why try and do anything? While this is different. There is a lot of good in this world, and in spite of all the tweaking and going back in time and so forth, 4D STS doesn't seem to be able to create anything. The Cs have mentioned several times wishful thinking on the STS side, and how that could lead to a bad surprise for them. Well, I think I see it better now. There is still a capacity for growth, for evolving consciousness, for doing good as we align ourselves with what we SEE is right (not what we want to believe is right). There is some free will in our choices.
And the huge efforts required in even getting rid of one bit of bad programming, one false belief or one thinking error are the more worth it when we think that that may be part of our "design", part of what we are here to learn. For each of those efforts, if our changing makes one person's life better, if we help at least one other being, then we are contributing something. We will not "save the world", and that was never our function, but we may be learning to know, which is learning to love, and thus create. "God" (The Cosmic Mind) is within us (as above so below), spread in all consciousness in existence, and as you grow and choose an alignment, you get "closer to God/The Cosmic Mind", in a sense. That to me makes the idea of being a "conduit for the Universe" a bit more concrete.
So, interestingly, to go back to Paul's saying, science can bring forth religion, and vicecersa: the more we get to know about God in things that CAN be seen, the more we develop faith in things not seen. And the more we keep that faith alive, the more curiosity we have, and the more we want to learn about things that can be seen. With that I feel comes a lot of gratitude, and suffering takes on a bigger meaning.
Anyway, just some thoughts even if I didn't manage to formulate them so well, for what they are worth.