The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs [Archive] - Page 12

TraineeHuman

26th July 2019, 03:19

I forgot earlier to include some suggestions about avoiding certain medical issues that occur as a result of undergoing the more genuine, or "marathon", form of kundalini experience. I do remember that four individuals in past years (at least one of them in the earlier version of this Forum, before 2010) said they experienced it, like myself, continuously non-stop day and night for at least some months if not years.

Firstly, through the years ever since the experience, my kidneys' health (my creatine level) has been close to borderline, or sometimes worse, whenever I have had a blood test. Somehow I've managed to always quickly recover whenever it's fallen below the acceptable level. Then again, the kidneys are usually extremely resilient in most people. As I'm vegetarian but meat is the most common source of creatine, I have some buckwheat grains with breakfast every morning, which seems to work for me. Apparently, in many alternative health systems excessive "fire" in the body weakens the kidneys. (I don't believe that corresponds to the fire element in astrology, by the way. I think here "fire" means something like life-force energy or some kind of "spiritual" energy manifesting in the physical. )

Secondly, the direction of flow of physical energy through my neurones, at least those in my chest, got permanently reversed. These days it flows vertically up instead of down. The standard way that cardiologists and doctors monitor the heart's current functioning is with an ECG (electrocardiogram) test (or by the patient wearing a Holter monitor). On this, it seems that "normal" for me --for my chest, at least -- is to have the "normal" direction reversed. As far as I know, there are no bad consequences from this, physically or psychologically. Indeed, we talk of feeling "uplifted", and it seems to me that this direction of flow does help one to feel positive, for some reason or other.

While the "marathon" kundalini experience is going on, you always need to guard against dehydration of the brain. To do this, at all times you need to have a water bottle handy with water plus a little sea salt and maybe a touch of fruit juice (or traditionally, in the Himalayas, some nettle tea). Otherwise there's the risk of developing epilepsy, because the kundalini energy also generates plenty of extra physical heat in the body, and that heat keeps getting moved towards the brain. I suspect that various famous individuals who were epileptics became that way because of the dehydration of their brain in this manner. My experience was that I didn't normally need to drink from my water bottle during the night, though I'd keep it handy by my bed at night and on occasion I'd take a sip during the night too.

Finally, I don't believe that even the "marathon" kundalini experience is in itself enough to actually release or truly begin the process of more rapidly freeing yourself from various forms of unhappiness permanently. As far as I can tell, what one needs at this point is receiving "transmission" from an individual who has already gone through such an experience themselves. Such "receiving" has nothing to do with having one's forehead touched etc. It's something that I believe takes hours (perhaps spread over time), and you have to yourself truly be a master of energy and of energy flows. By "energy" here I don't mean anything physical or emotional or mental (or electromagnetic) -- though I consider it does have significant mastery over the physical, emotional and mental realms. It's "energy" at a higher (or deeper) "level" of reality than any of that, and something that takes literally person-years of totally nonverbal work to master, in addition to one's having extensive prior experience of Divine worlds.

Guish

29th July 2019, 14:28

I have been away for a long time and it seems that we are still discussing Kundalini here. Great to see you again, TH.

Constance

29th July 2019, 21:14

I have been away for a long time and it seems that we are still discussing Kundalini here. Great to see you again, TH.

Welcome back Guish :sun:

petra

29th July 2019, 22:46

When I started this thread I'm sorry to say I was amazed and horrified to find that some readers seemed to believe that theoretical concepts or knowledge regarding some aspect of spirituality was in some way or sometimes a substitute for direct experience. There's no easy way, no royal road, no "sly person's path" in that sense. The via negativa is the only true way, I'm afraid.

Some of us are afraid too.... namely me
I've seen colored blobs with my eyes closed, but not on purpose. When the blobs began to have corners, and one time it looked like a word, I got frightened. Due to that one scary fact, I doubt I'll ever be trying meditation

I'm agreeing that there's no substitute for direct experience... I'd just like to point out that not all of us want to see things with our eyes closed

Valerie Villars

30th July 2019, 00:12

Early in this thread I've said various things about descension (or truly bringing Heaven down to Earth as the more advanced stage of spiritual development). I'd like to give some more specific details here, intended for those readers who’ve had or are having direct experiences of this. My comments will cover some details of where the highly misunderstood topic of kundalini descension fits in.

At least, this information is all based on my own experience and observations of certain other individuals I have known. (In the traditional terminology, ascension occurs individually only, and culminates in an experience of one of the Divine worlds --- where one experiences all things as being one, and that oneself is God or the Universe, and so on). Following this one becomes able to begin to enter the stages of descension.)

Descension does have stages, though once a stage has been gone through there will typically be further "trickle-on" of completing that stage fully, for years after. The later stages, as I understand them (assuming the individual hasn't for e4xample been trapped in lower astral levels as a result of drug use) are: the mental (or conceptual or symbolic), the emotional, the physical (which, as I'll try to explain in detail, is the kundalini stage), and the subconscious or shadow stage . It's necessary to go through these stages in that order (over years or lifetimes).

The mental stage is when one has a mental concept, or very vivid memories, of having experiences of one of the Divine worlds. (If you haven't experienced that vivid experience and the memory of it yet, then , as I understand it, I'm afraid you're still at a prior stage of descension, or at a stage of individual ascension prior to when descension begins.) Unfortunately, in a discussion forum like this we are stuck mostly in a mental world generally, like it or not. But the truth is, reality is not made out of ideas or concepts (or words, or pictures). Only mental reality is. (Many of the most leading nineteenth and twentieth century philosophers proved, by pure reason, that this is the case.)

The next stage of descension, the emotional one, is a very, very long journey indeed. I believe it took me the equivalent of a full-time person-decade to get through (hopefully) most of it. One could call it the psychotherapeutic or the "facing and allowing the truth" stage. As far as I understand, one only completes this when one becomes able to bring down bliss (or what is also known as “love”), or profound joy, into most situations, and to use such bliss to negate (most of) the sting of emotionally painful things. That’s bringing Nirvana down into the emotional level. Before you complete that, you’ll cop endless suffering and have to face it – unless you can find the right kind of awareness to overcome the suffering, though perhaps no-one does until near the end of this stage.

The next stage is the physical. As far as I know, this is, or culminates in, the kundalini stage (in the sense that it’s the stage where one has a continuous kundalini experience that typically keeps going day and night for at least several years). I need to clarify a whole lot of gigantic common misunderstandings regarding the workings of kundalini energy. There are largely two varieties of kundalini experience (as should also be clear , I believe,from the writings of various individuals such as Irina Tweedie). One variety is what I’ll call a “baby kundalini experience”. This typically lasts somewhere between one and twenty or so minutes. (It also includes the shaktipat experience.) I used to have an extraordinary spiritual teacher who was a master of kundalini yoga, in addition to being extraordinarily clairvoyant. In her classes, she was very good at spotting when someone was ready to have a baby kundalini activation. I would notice that when this occurred, a pale white ball, the size of a tennis ball or golf ball, would appear (on the astral level) in the energy field of the individual. It would linger below their feet and then at their feet or legs usually for some minutes. (I think this is because most individuals, including many meditators, aren’t connected with the energy flow that comes from the ground. To remedy this, they should meditate with their legs raised to the level of their solar plexus or higher.) Yhen the white ball would enter the physical body at the base of the spine, and usually begin to move much more quickly, up the spine. Quite often, though, it would get stuck at some chakra point or other. I found that I already had the developed the psychic skills to clear away the stuck energy at such a point while I remained at a distance. But I soon decided it was better to allow the individual to clear away their stuck energies themselves (probably subconsciously). I told my teacher I had been doing this in her classes, but she was concerned that I might not be able to avoid taking in some of the energies of the individual and, so to speak, “vacuuming” them into my own energy field. However, it so happened I already had a sufficient mastery of the relevant skills to easily avoid doing that altogether. But I consider that is a good example of the kind of skills of mastery over energy that one may need to develop during the “psychotherapy” or emotional stage. I was also certain that I have the skills to move the white ball of kundalini energy up all the way from below the feet to above the head without needing to ever touch the individual, on the forehead or anywhere else –- as long as I’m physically close by, i.e. in the same room.

The hard part, in my experience, is getting the white ball to appear in the first place. I have managed to do that on my own with a few individuals, whom I then only slightly assisted, or didn’t assist at all, as they moved the ball up their body to its destination at the oversoul area. For the ball to appear (below the individual’s feet), the individual needs to be undergoing some process of major psychotherapeutic change at that time. In one case, the individual was grieving over the loss of her father a few days before, a father she had been especially close to. Under those circumstances it wasn’t so difficult for me to use some professional counselling skills (with empathy) to initiate a sufficiently intense psychological healing to bring the white ball out. (Very well-known studies have proved, incidentally, that counselling or psychotherapy doesn’t result in any change for the better at all, in 70% of professional counselling or psychotherapy sessions. But sometimes, on the other hand, the client is very ready and willing at that particular time.)

That’s the baby kundalini experience. My teacher who was a kundalini master didn’t mention any other kind, not until when she noticed that I had been having a continuous kundalini experience for two weeks (which she was clairvoyant enough to know without my saying anything). But I need to point out here that in nineteenth century India, anyone exhibiting a baby kundalini experience would immediately be made a guru for the rest of his life. This meant that all his physical needs would from then on be taken care of and provided for, for free. Plus, as a guru, he would hold a position of great prestige in the local community. Clearly there was a huge incentive for such an individual to exaggerate and embellish what was going on during his baby kundalini experience -- and to imply that no more major and integrated form of kundalini experience existed. I’m not denying, though, that any baby kundalini experience will usually be (or include) one of the top 15 or 20 psychological breakthrough experiences in the individual’s lifetime.

The other type of kundalini experience is what we could call the marathon kundalini experience. This is incomparably vaster and broader in its transformative effects. As I’ve mentioned, it seems to usually last continuously for many months or, indeed, for a number of years. In early 2001, my master teacher told me I had been going through the beginning stage of such an experience continuously for the previous two weeks. It was true that I had gone through a number of somewhat major psychological breakthroughs all at the same time. But after two weeks I was feeling that these were kind of over, at least at a conscious level. I had however noticed I definitely seemed to be feeling the mid-summer heat more strongly than normal, and an unusually strong inner calmness. Beyond that, what I primarily experienced, on the surface at least, was a physical overheating of my entire body that went on non-stop day and night for around two years. For those two years and sometimes afterwards, I wasn’t able to wear any pyjamas at night or to use even a single blanket on my bed at night.

My teacher had withdrawn from contact with any of her students for what I think turned out to be a year and a half, so I was on my own. Without noticing it at first, I seemed to become very withdrawn for the first six months of that two year period. I was working as a contractor, but fortunately wasn’t offered a contract during the first eight months of this period. Ultimately, though, it seems one only needs to learn to calmly trust that the higher benevolent forces or energies working their way through one become stronger, usually, than any difficulties or egoic resistance or hostile forces.

In retrospect, when I reflect on what I know or have heard about others’ marathon k. experiences, it seems to me that, in many if not most cases, their marathon experience was entered into prematurely in some respects. That seems to have been the case with quite a few of my past spiritual teachers. None of my other teachers talked about the marathon experience, but I’ve deduced that a number of them certainly must have experienced it.

In my next post I’ll look at three ways in which I believe the marathon experience can be entered prematurely.

Trainee, wherever you are, thank you. I skimmed some of the thread, read parts and then got to the above post. Thanks again.

TraineeHuman

30th July 2019, 01:14

Hi Petra,

Meditation (at least when done properly) is, as I understand it, a going into one's subconscious and experiencing what's actually there, but doing so in a "neutral" and lightly accepting fashion, as in just observing it, and practising calmly not resisting it. (Then beyond that, the underlying background is just pure joy, but for years more "fog" will come in and need to be observed before it goes away too.) So, if you were seeing colored dots, they represent something that's present in your subconscious now and perhaps until you get rid of it. Perhaps the very best way to get rid of it is through meditation -- just kind of persevering with the fact that the dots are present, but learning to not mind their presence. That should certainly lead to their going away, eventually at any rate.

In my experience, colored dots have usually meant helpful beings from an astral level. But whatever they are, I would prefer to use meditation to get rid of their intrusion, even if it's intended to be benevolent. That way, they'll go but they'll "discharge" whatever helpful message they wanted to deliver, through a "download" or through one of your dreams.

If you don't want to use meditation to practise facing what's in your subconscious, we still all need to do so by some means or other. Learning through life-experiences alone is too slow, it seems to me. You felt fear regarding the colored dots, so the closer you can get to seeing and experiencing what the root of that fear is, the sooner it can dissolve away rather than hide in your subconscious somewhere.

kfm27917

25th October 2019, 16:26

The Wanderling
This used to be a series of stories related to Zen Buddhism and personal growth, united by a strange system of weblinks on a site called Angelfire. Somehow this site died.
However today I found an other entry point at http://the-wanderling.com
I quote from his website

One more tidbit is the domain structure. The Wanderling has undertaken to create his project in free website places, assembling a myriad of apparently different sites, but all interwoven. As the free website places fold and merge and change their rules, he shifts accordingly, thus a migration happens on this level as well. [Correction 2006: The Wanderling informs me that some of his material is now hosted on paid servers. And Update 2009: The Wanderling has scratched my back in return in his blog (June 14, 2009 entry) at MySpace.]

kfm27917

1st November 2019, 14:27

This will be a rather dense post, because I'm adapting it from some notes I wrote last night when I was noodling on the question of how to make sense of paranormal and postmortem phenomena. The idea requires more elaboration than I can give it here. But at least this is a start.

The basic idea is that our four-dimensional reality (three dimensions of space and one dimension of time) exists on a continuum, with higher dimensional realities above our own. For simplicity, I'll refer collectively to these higher-dimensional planes as five-dimensional or 5D reality, although there could be more dimensions than that.

The famous book Flatland by Edwin Abbott imagines a two-dimensional world existing on the surface of a sheet of paper. The narrator, a Flatlander, has an epiphany in which he experiences a higher, three-dimensional world from which he can look down on the paper from above. This episode of "cosmic consciousness" alters his worldview irrevocably.

Note that the two-dimensional world of Flatland is grounded in the three-dimensional world (known as Spaceland in the book). The ground of being, in other words, has more dimensions than the ordinary world. This observation points up a defect in the model of a holographic reality. A hologram is a three-dimensional image projected out of a two-dimensional plate. In that case, the ground of being is lower-dimensional than the observed reality. But in the Flatland model, the ground of being is higher-dimensional than our ordinary reality. I believe this is probably more correct.

In this case, to speak of going higher in terms of dimensions is also to speak of going deeper in terms of structure. This is not as paradoxical as it may seem. We already use the terms high and deep interchangeably to refer to advanced thinking: a high-minded deep thinker, or elevated, profound thought. So there's no necessary contradiction in saying that as we go higher, we also go deeper. It's a matter of perspective.

Now we have to ask in what way five-dimensional entities or realities or inputs would be experienced in our four-dimensional world. Again, an analogy with the world of Flatland is helpful. Imagine a pencil, a three-dimensional object. If it were to intrude into a purely two-dimensional world (Flatland), it would be perceived only as a slice. It might be a small dot (a slice of the graphite tip), or a somewhat larger circle (a slice of the wooden point), or a still larger circle (a slice of the widest part of the pencil). Or, if the slice were made at an angle, then it might be an oval. If the pencil were sliced lengthwise down the middle, it would be a silhouette of the pencil. But the matter how it is sliced, the slice itself will always be a two-dimensional object, and someone unfamiliar with the three-dimensional world will be unable to visualize the complete three-dimensional pencil, much less imagine its origins or its purpose.

There's one more point to make. Each higher level of reality corresponds to a higher level of consciousness. A four-dimensional reality is perceived by a four-dimensional mind - a mind limited by the architecture of a four-dimensional brain and nervous system. A five-dimensional reality is perceived by a five-dimensional consciousness, which has no such limitations. Five-dimensional entities intruding into four-dimensional space are perceived in a distorted or altered form not only because of the restrictions of the 4D environment but also because of the limitations of the 4D mind. Indeed, we could say that there is no distinction between environment and mind. The 5D object exists as a 4D perception in our reality because 1) that is the only way it can exist here and because 2) that is the only way it can be perceived by us. And in fact, #1 and #2 are two ways of saying the same thing. To be is to be perceived.

The 4D mind is essentially what we think of as the ego, while the 5D mind is what we think of as the higher self or the subliminal self. The ego, in other words, is a slice of a much larger and different 5D reality.

Even in our 4D incarnation, we are not utterly cut off from 5D reality (in terms of either higher consciousness or a higher plane of existence - which, again, amount to the same thing). We have intimations of it, leakage from it, hints and nudges and signs. We can improve our access to 5D reality by minimizing the activity of our 4D brain through hypnosis, the hypnopompic or hypnagogic stages of sleep, sensory deprivation, meditation, or even brain-impairing injury or illness. The basic function of the brain is to funnel or filter the overwhelming awareness of 5D consciousness into a manageable slice of 4D consciousness; because of this, impairment of brain functions can result in greater access to 5D consciousness.

Children, whose egos are not yet fully developed, are more likely to be in tune with 5D consciousness and to experience phenomena such as past-life memories, imaginary friends, ghosts, and ESP. Savants, whose brains are incomplete or defective in some way, are able to tune in to the higher levels of awareness of 5D consciousness. Their abilities can seem supernatural because 5D consciousness is supernatural in the literal sense - it is superior to (above and beyond) the 4D physical world.

Dreams, or at least some dreams, are 5D experiences altered and distorted into bizarre, incomprehensible slices of 4D memory. The 4D memory may bear as little resemblance to the original 5D experience as a circle bears to a pencil.

The quantum world is a 5D reality when it is unobserved. But when our 4D consciousness observes it, it must be rendered in 4D terms. Thus, in the double-slit experiments, a subatomic entity like a photon exists as a cloud of potentialities transcending time and space in its 5D form. But when observed, the 5D cloud of potentia must "collapse" into a 4D slice - a particular point in space and time.

Because 5D reality transcends space, entangled quantum entities can continue to affect each other across any distance of space. And because 5D reality transcends time, delayed-choice experiments will show effects that are seemingly retroactive.

What we know as time is a 4D slice of 5D reality. The Planck time, the shortest interval of time that can exist in our reality, is such a slice. What we know as space is also a 4D slice of 5D reality. The Planck length, the shortest interval of space that can exist in our reality is, again, such a slice.

How about various paranormal phenomena?

Telepathy. The five-dimensional realm is essentially unbound by time and space. Separation between minds is a separation of time and space. Without time and space, there is no separation. Therefore the 5D mind, when it is accessed, can pick up other people's thoughts, because it is not cut off from them.

Remote viewing and out-of-body experiences. Since the 5D realm is not limited by physical space or time, access to the 5D mind potentially allows access to any point in space or time.

Retrocognition and precognition. Unrestricted by time, the 5D mind can observe past and future events, or at least probabilities (bearing in mind that the 5D quantum world consists of clouds of probabilities, not specific physical objects at specific points).

Near-death experiences. The dying brain allows greatly expanded access to the 5D realm, though still necessarily interpreted in 4D terms by the recovered patient. These 4D interpretations may be unintentionally misleading and inaccurate, as we see in conflicting claims that reflect cultural differences, or in prophesies that fail.

Mediumship. A medium can connect extra-physically with discarnate (5D) minds; but these minds must adjust to 4-D conditions, in order to interface with the medium's brain. This is why discarnate communicators typically say they must "lower their vibrations" and restrict their consciousness to an earthly level in order to communicate through a medium. It also accounts for errors in communication, as the (temporarily) 4D mind of the communicator and/or the (necessarily) 4D brain of the medium alters and distorts the material coming through - in effect, misinterpreting the 4D slices of 5D reality.

Physical mediumship and psychokinesis. 5D consciousness, transcending space and time, allows manipulation of matter and energy. But when expressed in our 4D reality and perceived by our 4D consciousness, this ability is inevitably inhibited and curtailed. Physical mediums insist that they cannot perform in the light, not even infrared light. Although this requirement has often been merely a cover for fraud, it may also have a legitimate basis, in that any illumination that allows the 4D brain to perceive the phenomena will also inevitably distort, alter, restrict, and inhibit the phenomena by converting it into 4D terms.

Ghosts, apparitions, hauntings, poltergeists. These seem to exist at the borderland between 5D and 4D realities, and as such they are ephemeral, elusive, and sometimes perceived by certain observers but not others. Attempts to capture the phenomena on film or video often fail, presumably because, as with physical mediumship, any physical (4D) perception will inevitably distort or inhibit the 5D source.

UFOs and related phenomena. Again, these seem to exist at the borderland between 5D and 4D realities, with many of the the same characteristics as ghosts and apparitions (or sightings of the Virgin Mary etc.). If UFOs, whatever they are, originate in 5D reality, then their intrusion into our 4D reality will inevitably alter and distort them. What we are seeing is a 4D slice, not the 5D whole. Since perception is reality, and since we can only perceive things that are familiar to us in some way, we will perceive these 4D slices as something roughly known to us. Technologically primitive peoples may perceive them as gods. A seafaring people may perceive them as schooners in the sky. A culture just developing airships may see them as immense dirigibles. A culture on the verge of space travel may perceive them as spaceships. These perceptions have little to do with the actual 5D reality, which our 4D minds cannot apprehend. Our senses cannot be trusted when dealing with slices of 5D phenomena that we're not equipped to perceive.

Synchronicities. These are possibly an example of the 5D higher self impinging on the 4D ego and its environment. Again, the distinction between observer and observed may not hold at higher levels of reality, so that changes in our environment and changes in our perception may only be two different aspects of the same thing.

The basic point is that the ground of being is a five- (or more-) dimensional reality, while our ordinary experience is a four-dimensional reality. Attempts to apprehend intrusions of 5D phenomena into our 4D realm will inevitably distort the true nature of those phenomena. We can see only a slice of this higher dimension. In fact, we ourselves - as we currently exist in this incarnation - are only a slice of our true higher-dimensional selves. Where we make an error is in mistaking the slice for the whole.

from https://www.sott.net/article/422869-Exploring-the-fourth-dimension-Possible-implications-for-consciousness-and-the-paranormal

Ernie Nemeth

1st November 2019, 18:00

I believe, because of the intrinsic nature of the evil all around us and the tendency of everything here to decay and fade away, that this plane of existence is unreal. Given that is not how we encounter it, it seems to me that any attempt to rationalize the reality of this situation is a means to keep us locked into this level. So all talk of spirituality, obe, or any other manifestation in this realm is merely a figment and part of the gestalt of this place.

The very best to be hoped for is a quick and violent end, one that leaves no time for contemplation at the moment of death.

In this way the normal attraction of returning is removed and the self can naturally break out of this matrix.

When I die I will not be looking for anything, or trying to make sense of which path to take. I will feel my way toward the love of my Creator with single-minded purpose. No lesser interest will deter or distract me.

I came here on purpose to free the minds of god's creation, my own foremost. When I shake off these mortal coils it will be forever. Like a reformed drug addict, it is the downside of the experience that keeps me safe from future temptation.

I will not be back, thanks.

The souls I have touched will carry on the work. I will help from the other side where I am far more adept and effective.

TraineeHuman

2nd November 2019, 03:32

Hi Ernie,

I don't have an interest myself (particularly in recent years) in saying things about spirituality that aren't based on my own experience(s), or extrapolated from that experience as some kind of an explanation of it. So, then, based on my experience (in the real world), the only way to become free of any particular form or kind of suffering is through joy and acceptance of it. In other words, the suffering essentially dissolves (or dissolves within several minutes) even as I'm experiencing it. Or else, I'm certainly not free of that particular area of suffering yet.

It would seem to me, then, that the only way to get free of this "vale of suffering" would be, as I say, through being able to maintain joy and positive mood even in the midst of all suffering. No sour grapes about it. I don't see how one could do that with the point of view that suffering is too terrible to re-experience it. Rather, the point of view should be, surely, that one can re-experience it and not be defeated or wounded by it at all, but one no longer needs to do so, because there are other things to do, or not-do.

Ernie Nemeth

2nd November 2019, 20:43

Thank you for replying to what truly amounted to a non-sequitur.

So I'll drop the drama...to reply.

The point I am trying to make is that it is this world that sours my experience, that if it was a world of our own choosing it would be otherwise. It is the travesties of this life that assault my sensibilities. The unfairness, the pain. And the knowledge that this world could be a place of joy in a matter of days, if that was the intent. But it is not. And so here we are.

I do not pretend to know the intent of the Creator. But it is obvious this world was intended. And so I rile against the idea that such a world is a place in which I belong, but I must since here I am.

Blind, I turn to look but cannot see. Deaf, I hear a call that is not there. Mute, I utter a plea and silence ushers forth.

Like that.

Valerie Villars

2nd November 2019, 20:55

Ultimately, I find the ones who see the most, have the most pain for the injustice in this world.
But, I try to flip it and think.."Well, what if we were sent here with amnesia, to somehow help the situation."

Perhaps, if we had full recall of who we are and why we are here, we could be tortured for information or otherwise blow our cover. Look what happened to Jesus. He knew his full power and connection to source. I like to think this is a different way to help.

I say this, because I have had some recall of our true nature or mine specifically, but was not allowed to fully remember or hold on to that knowledge.

Thus, I am just an average girl who is seen as a bit kooky. You know, the Fool. If it's for the greater good, I'm all in and I can handle this.

East Sun

3rd November 2019, 00:18

I a long time ago I came to the realization that there is no hell or heaven. Those concepts are a
construct of religion trying to control the people they were assigned to "shepherd" and keep in line.

There may be an existence beyond our physical lives after many reincarnations when we reach an
enlightened state butt that's a maybe also.

There is evidence, according to Dr. Ian Stephenson, that reincarnation does indeed exist, but
that does not tell us a lot. That could be the way things are and we do not know why.

Have we lived many lives and not have clue as to what we experienced? In all reality we just
don't know.

Is there a god, maybe yes and maybe no. If yes, that god could be totally different to anything
we can imagine.

I try to keep an open mind to all possibilities.

TraineeHuman

15th November 2019, 00:05

Let's assume that in reality everything truly is one. Also let's assume that you yourself are in touch with full reality (or, is it that you are really and permanently consciously merged into full reality?) , so much that you know that this total oneness is the truth, and the whole truth.

Then I need to respectfully point out that actually, in that case, you don't know what "one" means. Why not? Well, to see this we need to build up a picture of the implications of utter oneness. Firstly, if all there is is one, the one, the oneness, then anything, and everything, other than "the one", or "oneness", is an illusion, and non-existent. In other words, it's not "one" as in contrast to "two" or as in contrast to anything else, is it?

"Oneness", then, because of this, is in many respects a stand-alone concept . Here, reality is the one without a second. No need for any other concept -- or, at the very least, definitely not any other numbers-wise concept. Paradoxically, though, it seems to me this stand-alone quality of that concept (the concept of the one) flatly and totally contradicts the quality of ultimate boundless interaction and inter-relation and fertility -- i.e., the manyness --, which is what that concept is presumably intended by you to be pointing at when you speak of oneness (because you're saying, of course, that the one is the all, an all which to us seems supremely interactive by its very nature, and even necessarily so).

Let me put this point a slightly different way. If there is only oneness, then you just don't really know twoness or separation, at all. Not really. Instead, everything must in some sense or subtle fashion be very tightly glued together, in a way rather like sticky toffee. And it would be just too confusing to have two notions (such as "oneness" and "twoness") referring to exactly the same thing or phenomenon. So, the "one" here must be very different in meaning from the number "one" we know in daily life when we do our shopping or our paperwork, where it always points towards the possibility of "two". That's because here, there isn't even any possibility of "two". But -- to go a step further -- I suggest it's also even misleading to talk of "the one" at all here, in the "space" of nothing-but-one. It would be more accurate -- or, at least, more clear -- to instead use a phrase like "all existence" or "all reality" -- something that we don't even imagine there could ever be two of, because it would be impossible by the very definition of the words and concepts.

This brings me to asking certain questions about how people who describe themselves as "nondualists" live. For instance, it seems to be the case their actions make it clear that they do after all know, and respect, the existence of physical separation. I question, though, whether many such individuals really have fully integrated the oneness with "the illusion" in their daily lives. In my adolescence and before, and in my twenties, I had many experiences of what was clearly profound oneness in some sense. At sixteen I would ponder what it might really mean to apparently know, as it seemed I did, that I was the universe and I was God and so on. And I would also, for example, wonder about how to solve the problem that it seems impossible to find a "before" in relation to something "before:" the whole of linear time. Then I gradually realized, more and more, over a period of years, that what it was really all about was just integrating the Divine, the One, into ordinary experience. Then I realized that no, it was really about integrating the soul or the spirit into the same. (This is also why I expect experiences with drugs won't do it for anyone. Because it's all about integration into ordinary everyday life, and not escaping, at all, in many ways.) But many of the nondualists seem to insist on believing that the ordinary is an illusion, and it seems to me they thereby miss the whole point, and the true benefits. Don't get me wrong. I certainly don't mind someone saying that the truest reality is oneness -- as long as they every day continuously keep living what they're saying.

Ernie Nemeth

22nd November 2019, 15:03

The only way oneness is real is if we share one mind. If we share one mind this must be one heck of a large mind. And if we live in a mind scape this reality is truly an illusion but so is every experience of individuality.

If we exist in the mind of a great being, are we even real?

Ernie Nemeth

20th December 2019, 13:47

How far can one take their individuality before it clashes with the collective? How far can god take the notion of plurality? God is One, to make any sense. Why does god need two, or even contemplate the many, when clearly there can be no such things?

TH touches on it when writing,
I question, though, whether many such individuals really have fully integrated the oneness with "the illusion" in their daily lives. In my adolescence and before, and in my twenties, I had many experiences of what was clearly profound oneness in some sense.

It seems that it is the context in which one places such a sense of oneness that makes a difference. TraineeHuman goes on to say,
Then I gradually realized, more and more, over a period of years, that what it was really all about was just integrating the Divine, the One, into ordinary experience. Then I realized that no, it was really about integrating the soul or the spirit into the same.

Imagine a condition whereby even thought is one, is so comprehensive that it has no counter or opposite - we cannot. And yet we can because we are exactly that!

There are two interconnected thought trains that are required in order for our reality to sprout forth. The first is the grainier of the two. It is the idea of a finite realm, where all is separate and unique. The second is of a finer quality and represents the larger realm of the infinite.

These thought trains inter-mesh, and flesh out the notion, making it seem more real and profound. Yet the entire finite realm is a mere infinitesimal sum spanning a mere instant in duration, surrounded and suffused by infinity.

And here it might be seen that it is the confusion between infinity and eternity that allows the error in perception, both physical and intellectual, to occur. Infinity is a description of an impossibility in terms of our accepted state.

It is as though there are these reality bubbles that surround each individual, protecting the individual from the truth of their environment and willfully upholding the illusion of their separate selves.

This 'bubble' is the miracle.

That these 'bubbles' float about totally unmindful of a larger existence is the mystery.

To try and unravel these inter-meshing thought trains is to totally unravel the 'reality' we experience.

Into what does the 'bubble' expand or extend when it no longer insulates the perceiver from the perceived?

Is there a 'largest' 'bubble' that includes god?

How far can god go with the notion of plurality before god ends up with the notion of YOU?

TraineeHuman

20th December 2019, 22:20

Hi again, Ernie,
If one is going to be accurate (despite some of my posts), I claim that the essence of all reality, and of all that's important in it, is, if you like, totally verb-like (or relational) and not noun-like (object-like, or subject-like) at all. That's one thing I eventually realized I had seen with certainty a long time ago. Throw out all objects and subjects, as far as practicable. (Of course, though, in our everyday lives there are practical reasons why we need to rather seriously play the subject and object charade.)

The problem here, for me, is that God ("god") as you evidently would conceive it/him/her seems, to me , to be sometimes an object (even "oneness" is an object, albeit an abstract one), and sometimes a subject that, however, gets implicitly objectized just about every time anyone speaks about it. And, I claim again, objects (and subjects) are anathema if you want to get a truer account of reality.

Eventually I learnt that the philosopher A. N. Whitehead was one Westerner who discovered this and clarified it I think over a hundred years ago, in quite Western language. Traditional Zen Buddhism was kind of doctrinally almost based on it, though, very sadly, I find that most (but not all) Western Zen "Masters" don't seem to me to really understand it, far as I can tell. But what can you do? At least the top-level Tibetans understand perfectly that the true essence of Buddhism is the interrelations, the interconnections, of absolutely all things.

My post #2649 in this thread, if you ignore the first two paragraphs (which unfortunately were on a different topic), describes the relational metaphysics as far as I originally worked it out.

Maybe it's useful to think of "the intuition" here. The intuition starts from, or patly operates from, a very wholistic perception. The intuition, when developed and used accurately, and sufficiently, has a higher (or deeper) type of understanding That's why we tend to feel "completed" by it. So, the intuition (which functions in a verblike way in spite of being labelled by a noun) can be a kind of bridge towards seeing beyond the subject/object illusion.

Ernie Nemeth

22nd December 2019, 15:49

The last time I had a full-blown trans-personal experience I was in an altered state for almost two weeks. I cannot even remember what it felt like except to say I was absolutely certain, and so full of love I oozed the stuff. I missed most of the connections and totally missed the repercussions. I could have performed incredible miracles, and I guess I did do some bits of magic, but I was completely taken with the feel of the experience, and not so much the intellectual meaning of it - the things it implied...

TraineeHuman

23rd December 2019, 02:38

From my point of view, Ernie, you're seeing (and I don't mean intellectually seeing) that state of bliss, that you've just described, as supposedly exceptional (and "altered"). Exceptional rather than normal and everyday and already your true state that you (the many false parts of you) have been very laboriously hiding from yourself since early childhood-- and that are still present in you, but locked away and hidden, whenever you get in a mundane or stressful or "boring" or painful situation.

It sounds to me like your next step (congratulations!) would be to slowly learn to inject that same profound bliss and contentment more and more fully. and within fewer and fewer minutes, and for longer and longer, into all those "unspecial" if not "anti-special" situations. This is a gradual and long process, but that's the next stage.

By the way, if you experience sustained bliss like that for two weeks, what always happens is that within the next year or two if not earlier, the Universe will kind of slap you in the face by throwing the opposite state at you. That will leave you feeling "lost", like someone adrift in the ocean in a heavy storm without a raft or lifejacket or lifebuoy. In my next post I'll try to briefly describe, in general terms, how one gradually saves oneself from that.

Ernie Nemeth

23rd December 2019, 16:32

That experience was 14 years ago. It is barely a memory.

Since, I feel I have been under constant attack, barring me from further attempts for fear of being forcibly stopped.

But it is also that I fear my own power. I fear the responsibility. I fear the change it represents. I even fear that I will have to become what I do not want to be - a martyr and a holy man...eschewing the fruits of this world.

When I get the message of the wonders I could achieve I immediately ask, 'what about me?', 'what's in it for me?'. The reply is not what I want to hear. Although of course it is about me, I'm told, the adults need to tend to the children - and most are but children in this world. So I'm told to want nothing and accumulate nothing and not covet anything here. My reward is in another place at another time, I'm told.

I'm tired of being told to value the (p)light of others more than my own. And that my own blazing light must first burn away the thing I believe I am - that is the plight I find myself in.

I am afraid of failing, like I have in this mundane world as a little peon of no import. I have learned failure is my plight. I'd rather not try at something so important and fail - in my mind it is better just to know I probably couldn't have succeeded anyway.

But the little world I have carved out for myself is coming undone. I cannot hold at bay the forces that try and undermine my efforts. My bubble of safety has been breeched and my woman is the first to suffer. Of course she is, I have focused all my energy on her. But as her health finally fails because of my lack of power and faith I see I will soon be forced into the world again where chaos will consume me.

My time has come and gone.

TraineeHuman

30th December 2019, 01:35

I'd like to make some comments about one or two of the things involved in making a certain transition. The transition I'm concerned with is from having the kind of experience Ernie described in post #2769 only on rare or special occasions, such as during and following a meditation retreat, to something in the end within one's reach daily.

Firstly, all the Indian gurus (including even Krishnamurti) unfortunately described the essential basis, the foundation, of true meditation as being a state of "no thinking". These days we're able to measure, though, that the most proficient meditators and psychic healers quickly bring the thought waves in their brain down to half a cycle per second. But then, the flow of electricity throughout the brain doesn't get any stiller than that. And we know for a fact that whenever there's a flow of electric current, thoughts are going on there.

So, let me suggest it's certainly more accurate and much less confusing to say that the basis of meditation is a state of something like holding no opinions, or no judgments, or no interpretations, at all. Indeed, on closer examination we find that by "no thoughts" the Indian gurus really mean merely not having our primary focus of attention or concentration on the thoughts going on inside us, or not on their rational content.
I once made a list of more than fifty different commonly used instructions, each of them considered to be supposedly describing the basis or essence of meditation. Of these, one of the ones that I find particularly informative is the one that's well-known to have been the meditation instruction the Buddha had most often preferred to give. This was the instruction to simply let everything be just exactly as it is. I find this revealing because it implies both having no opinions at all (no judgments, no interpretations, no identity) regarding whatever is going on inside one, but also no opinions regarding whatever is going on, or that one is in any way aware of going on, in the world around one.

Once one becomes skilful at consciously entering into and "holding" that no-opinions state, one discovers more and more that this is a state of greater (higher, deeper) understanding. Not only that, but one eventually discovers that one can begin to enter that no-opinions state briefly while in the midst of a difficult situation in everyday life. And that out of the no-opinions state there kind of spontaneously comes joy, or bliss, and creative, constructive, positive solutions that apply to the everyday situations, and that you can quickly bring in to those situations and transform them. But that usually takes many years to develop.

Early in this thread, various individuals would describe parts of their dreams and usually try to present their own interpretation of a dream's meaning, or try to analyze what the meaning might be. I instinctively knew that something big was completely missing there. But at the time I couldn't work out exactly what. Later on, after considerable reflection, I came to the following conclusion. As I've explained, one can only access one's higher understanding (and therefore a proper interpretation of a dream) by going into the no-opinions state first. And no-opinions does mean absolutely no opinions. (By contrast, notice that the individuals who'd had a dream would often be eager and in a hurry to form their opinion about what it meant first, before looking at anything further.) That no-opinions state involves a kind of entry into "nothingness", though I consider that "everythingness" would be a more accurate term to use with Westerners. In "everythingness", one gains access to a higher kind of seeing, a seeing of all possibilities at once simultaneously, in perfect balance with one another. Out of this very big picture one becomes able to see the real truth about one's own situation, or about the broad interpretation of one's own particular dream, and to then apply that back in the world of opinions and judgments and identities. After all, most "skills" in any line of work do necessarily involve the making of judgments and decisions of various kinds, and of forming certain opinions about what's required at various times.

If one learns to cultivate the no-opinions state readily and deeply enough, from my experience it will eventually become something that intertwines with more and more of one's daily life. That intertwining also needs to be cultivated extensively enough and in an enormous variety of situations. The experience will no doubt eventually seem to become more "ordinary" and less spectacular, once one at long last no longer needs to kind of super-dramatize going into one's true deeper state of being.

Ernie Nemeth

30th December 2019, 20:24

There was a time, in my early thirties, when for the first time ever, I found myself living alone. I did not like it. I was just getting over my divorce and settling into single-fatherhood. I began to obsess over my next significant other. Who I wanted her to be. I remember pacing round and round my apartment, for hours at a stretch, every day for weeks, considering the qualities I wished her to have. Even down to physical appearance, including red hair.

It would be about 18 months later that this exact woman came into my life, right down to the demeanor, profession, and red hair!

With all the rationalizing, with all my experience, with all my wisdom (ya, right), she would not be the one, although I was with her for almost ten years.

And then after a great deal of chaos, a woman with almost the exact opposite qualities would become the one. Go figure.

For all of our intellectual prowess, imagined or otherwise, there is a source that knows best. And when we are thinking our rational thoughts, that source merely observes and remains silent...but give it room, give it an ear, or merely stay out of its way to let happen the marvels it can manifest.

TraineeHuman

2nd January 2020, 12:03

Apparently I need to explain again (though I did so in 2013) what I mean in this thread by "descension". This term is very familiar to initiates above a certain level equally in both the Western and the Eastern esoteric traditions.

Firstly, in such traditions the term "ascension" normally refers to the individual rising of consciousness to a higher level. As one develops spiritually, there may come the point where one experiences apparent union with the entire universe. This is known as "the top of the first mountain (or of the white mountain)".

Following that experience, the next step for the individual is to bring a finer level of awareness (of understanding and empathy) progressively down to the levels of consciousness one has risen up: -- the spirit level, then the soul or intuitive level, then the mental level, then the emotional, then the physical, then the subconscious. At the mental and emotional levels there is some healing and reduction of one's traumas and conditioning, and also all the more so at the subconscious level.

As I explained in post #2745, properly doing this at the physical level involves (the genuine variety of) kundalini experience, which often lasts for months or years continuously and in the end leaves the direction of flow of energy vertically through the front of the body, and in certain other areas of the body, permanently reversed.

Descension into the sub-conscious means reaching he foot of the first mountain and also the foot of the second mountain, which is the first of the "golden" mountains.

One's continued evolvement involves "climbing" up and down the two golden (or divine) mountains. As far as I understand, once one has got through descension through the physical level of the third mountain, one has the option to remain physically immortal for as long as one wishes. One does this by generating a youngish new body whenever desired.

Various individuals, both Eastern and Western, are considered to have done this. In India today, with the advent of the internet many consider that Sri Babaji, the inventor of kriya yoga, is at least seven thousand years old. This is because there has been an unbroken chain on record of Babaji having taught kriya yoga to one guru, and that guru's guru, and the latter's guru, in a verifiably unbroken sequence for thousands of years. There is also considerable anecdotal evidence that the Buddha resurrected himself for quite a considerable number of years.

In the West there has been a somewhat similar story with "St. Germain", who is also reputed to have invented sixteenth century alchemy, among other things. Also, in France in the nineteenth century and early twentieth there was a pair of adolescent boys who seemed to never age, over a number of decades, but apparently changed their town of residence every so many years. They always finished first in every subject at school and also in every sport and in all fine arts.

TraineeHuman

15th February 2020, 06:25

VnnAKGpRW6U

Ernie Nemeth

15th February 2020, 16:43

Orph

15th February 2020, 19:24

I'm not understanding the "Understanding the self" video. He says that self-realization isn't about becoming your higher self, or super self, or whatever other name you might ascribe to it. He says it's about understanding our human self with all it's warts and imperfections.

Yeah, ... well, .... I already know that self. I live it every waking second. So, by his definition, we are all self-realized beings by default just by being alive. (Or should I say just by being aware).

The thing is, I want to go beyond this self-realized aware state and experience a little ... (borrowing the title of this thread), ... "The higher self and transcendent experience, including OBE's". Or, as I mentioned already, maybe I'm totally missing the point of this video.

TraineeHuman

15th February 2020, 21:13

Hi, Orph. The video above was of Sri M during satsang, so the implication is that he's talking about meditation or the need for meditation, plus the application in real life of some of the skills that get strengthened during meditation.

Essentially all forms of meditation, as I understand them, involve going into one's subconscious and (whether one at all consciously knows it or not) looking at some of those ugly aspects of one's lower self -- such as those that Ernie has so eloquently described just above. Meditation (most forms of it) always involves looking at one's lower self from a space of no opinions, no judgments, and no interpretations, as I mentioned in a recent post. This is of course kind of the opposite of what Ernie was expressing in the above post. It's kind of saying and energetically holding to: "So what?" to all that, and is also not an intellectual exercise. It takes a long time and strong motivation to keep doing this. One can also at times practise this no-opinions state or position for brief moments in the course of ordinary life. That no-opinions state directly activates some of one's higher faculties. In this way, though, Orph, we may initially only get to using our higher faculties properly by applying them in response to parts of our lower self. Which is as it should be, because that way we learn to be inwardly stronger.

TraineeHuman

22nd April 2020, 12:23

My addictions isolate me.

My smokings require a lot of investment that I am not even aware is transpiring until I suddenly need to focus on something actually truly important. Then my addictions become a nuisance. It feels like I am a slave to these cravings I cannot abate.

The same can be said of my fears. I invest a lot in my fears. More than I know. They shape who I am.

Or more accurately they appear to shape who I appear to be.

Interestingly, the same applies to my true identity.

My love connects me, and never lets that connection fade even though at times it has been convenient to pretend otherwise. And my knowledge, my conviction especially, is always there to draw on, even when I feel I am bereft. It too is a distraction, when faced with the concerns of this corporeal life. But it is not an addiction, although it behaves the same from my perspective. I have to invest time and effort to assuage the need to love, to stay true to my convictions, to remain aware of my connection to All.

In the state of bliss, being authentic is effortless.

Just an observation from recent experience.

Thank you for replying to what truly amounted to a non-sequitur.

So I'll drop the drama...to reply.

The point I am trying to make is that it is this world that sours my experience, that if it was a world of our own choosing it would be otherwise. It is the travesties of this life that assault my sensibilities. The unfairness, the pain. And the knowledge that this world could be a place of joy in a matter of days, if that was the intent. But it is not. And so here we are.

I do not pretend to know the intent of the Creator. But it is obvious this world was intended. And so I rile against the idea that such a world is a place in which I belong, but I must since here I am.

Blind, I turn to look but cannot see. Deaf, I hear a call that is not there. Mute, I utter a plea and silence ushers forth.

Like that.

I guess this is a late further part of my response to your post. May I suggest that the only legitimate way out of -- and the lesson that we continually need to "get" from -- any (supposedly) unbearable situation comes through learning how to go through it with full and total acceptance of it. At least, I believe that's step one here. Let me quote Krishnamurti on the subject. (Krishnamurti's position on everything was about 100% pure Buddhism, but updated a little for modern times.)

"Why are we not capable of looking at the thing exactly 'as is'? Which means that, if we are in pain, let us live with it, look at it, and not try to transform it into something else. If I am in misery, not only physically but especially psychologically, how am I to understand it? By not wishing to be different, surely." True, but to really understand it like that, the part of you that's doing the understanding is immediately right outside the misery game by definition, and it's peacefully watching. This is quite a paradox. Because by truly trying not to escape at all, part of you automatically breaks out of jail, effortlessly, instantly, without even needing to ask.

Meanwhile, to continue quoting Krishnamurti: "First, I must look at it, I must live with it, I must go into it. I mustn't condemn it, mustn't compare it, wish it to be something else. I must be entirely with that thing, must I not?" Well, yes, except that, again, we are such magical and wholistic beings that our consciousness doesn't ever really allow itself to get boxed into any jail, not fully. Krishnamurti continues: "Which is extremely arduous, because the mind refuses to look at it. It wants to go off at a tangent." Yep, the mind is jealous of whatever things the consciousness does effortlessly. But the mind won't succeed very well here. To continue the quote: The mind "says, 'Let me seek an answer, a solution, there must be one'. In other words, it is escaping from what is. And this escape, with most of us, is what we call search -- search for the Master, search for truth, search for love, search for God ... And, do we have to make an effort to understand what is taking place? We [do, after all,] have to make an effort to escape when we don't want it. But when it is there, to understand it, do we have to make an effort?"

Krishnamurti is saying here that step two is to understand why we are feeling so uncomfortable or in suffering. And that we get to step two effortlessly, preferably through total acceptance and non-resistance of the situation, which is step one. Going by my own experience, though, I would say that step two is not primarily so much a matter of understanding one's painful situation or feeling. Rather, I would prefer to say it's more a matter, if at all possible for you (for any individual) , of injecting or drawing on the joy of aliveness, or of the I AM. And of in some way blending that into your experience of that situation, so that at least some of the suffering you feel there gets quickly dissolved.

Ernie Nemeth

22nd April 2020, 13:02

What happens when you know something?

What if that something is so simple it is a frustration to comprehend why it is not already known?

What if you saw that something manifest in an entirely different arena with the exact opposite effect and outcome?

Look at how quickly certain events galvanize and unify the will of the people. The world can change overnight in such situations. Just look at how quickly the public responded to a world-wide threat, mostly conjured out of thin air.

Imagine if the public considered unifying in this way with a true cause, insisting on real change. The world could transform overnight for the better.

That is my message, that is my mission.

And yet again humanity is on a path to annihilation instead.

The suffering comes from understanding it is needless, not that it cannot be borne. Being in a body is already a state of suffering, of limitation, of decay and attrition and death. It need not highlight the negative and lead to despair. It could celebrate living and elevate the experience to express and appreciate the beauty and the art of being human.

That is my pain, a pain much of the astral plane understands to be merely an exercise in futility.

That is what I know.

Terry777

23rd April 2020, 06:38

My first OBE was because of a near death experience around 3 years old. Possibly because of the NDE is why it's so easy for me.

I've had several astral projection experiences that I was unaware of, where I've appeared in people's bedrooms at night. One was back in 1996 where I was warning a housemate about burning to death because of her newly installed gas stove in her bedroom. She confronted me in the morning about appearing in her bedroom pointing at her stove, which I had no memory of, but it gave me the opportunity to warn her about the gas stove, 9/11, and the massive nuke exploded over the Rockefeller building. She took the stove warning seriously, but then still moved back to the NYC area.

One other astral projection was this women who's husband was going to beat her to death. I managed to convince her not to go back to her husband for the sake of her children.

I've used astral travels to find a new place to incarnate. I'm just not into what this place is becoming, although it still could be good for people who enjoy such issues.

TraineeHuman

9th May 2020, 13:33

Hi Terry,

Apologies for not responding to you sooner. At the start of this thread I was talking about OBEa, but in hindsight it seems to me that the best way to have OBEs isn't through trying to force one to happen by willpower and effort. Not at all. Not ever. Rather, at the risk of perhaps sounding egocentric, I now consider it ought to happen either as a natural, unforced product of the partial switching off of the physical senses which occurs automatically and naturally if one is meditating intensely enough, and what i would consider "prperly enough" or "masterfully enough" or something like that. Certainly, it also can often involve a conscious willingness to in effect switch on something extra than, additional to, physical perceptions or sensations or information. The other way to do it naturally, I now feel, is to go into it while one is asleep, hence going into a "waking" dream where one feels very conscious and may often later, on waking up physically, remember what happened.

It sounds like you're doing something like this anyway, quite easily and fluently at least some of the time.

I'm impressed by the accuracy of some of your OB perceptions. As I see it, the astral world is one where the Many Worlds Hypothesis is valid whereas I consider it's not valid at all in the physical world (despite the excuse some imagine they can use in the physical world that they're supposedly "creating another reality" when in fact they're just lying). However, all the Many Worlds one can experience in the astral will include such things as worlds constructed out of what you desire, or what you fear, or what you fantasize, and so on. So although they're quite real in the astral, quite often when you're back in the physical they're not, or they're only partially real. This complicates the question of how to be sure one is accurately describing insights into the physical world gained via the astral -- though perhaps some insights into others' minds etc may be quite accurate. Not that I'm trying to invalidate the impressive level of details you've experienced. But I consider one does also need to take this side of it into account. I think this is why remote viewing puts such huge emphasis on capturing lots and lots of physical details about the target which is, however, viewed from out of one's body.

TraineeHuman

3rd December 2020, 05:43

In post #2730 I made some comments or suggestions or hints about in what ways such things as affirmations do and don't work, and about why/when that's the case. In this post I want to continue with some further points.
In my experience the whole subject is many-faceted. I hope to explain a little here about why t's not quite as simple as some obviously believe.

I'll need to briefly discuss or mention various things about desire, will power, prayers, and some aspects of how higher worlds interact with lower worlds.

To choose a point just to begin from, let's note that very often -- in fact, usually -- when someone talks of "will power", usually a more accurate term would be "won't power". "I won't smoke any more", or "I'll avoid eating food that has toxic or inflammatory effects on my organism and thereby makes me gain weight", or "I won't continually escape out of the present moment while I'm at work, and so in that sense I won't indulge in hating my job". And so on, for whatever the issue is.

But, if will power has so much to do with "won't", and therefore inevitably at times with inherently somewhat negative things such as resistance and escape, surely one has to wonder. Under what sorts of circumstances is "won't power" truly altogether 100% guaranteed a wholesome thing? Obviously, though, I admit, we do also need to use will power for many positive ends such as, for instance, getting our body out of bed in the morning so we can arrive at work on time, or to meet various family-related expectations or obligations. I admit it's also true that it's often practical to use "won't power" with the positive end or hope of momentarily freeing ourselves from negative or demeaning temptations or urges.

Enough just for now about "won't" power. Next, some comments about our positively willing something to happen. It seems to me, and let's note, that nearly always positive affirmations take the form of:

"My will be done."

And not, usually, "Thy will be done", where "Thy" refers to the Universe, to Source.

In this respect, affirmations (or "The Secret", so-called) try to achieve the same thing as prayers of the "Dear Santa" type (most prayers) do. And that is to try to twist the arm of God, or of the Universe, into giving me my desire.

So, in realizing this we have already uncovered what's flawed in most affirmations (and prayers of the "Dear Santa" type or intention). The demonic gods, such as Lucifer (and they do exist), are evil only because they live by: "My will be done, and to hell with what the Universe or the Whole wants."

I'm not denying that we're all more powerful beings than most of us probably think (if we can access our inner potential). Neither am I denying that if our consciousness rises to a world, a level of reality, that lies beyond the mental worlds (the worlds of thought and of form), then from that world of wholistic intuition we can bring a higher energy down that will energize our thoughts in such a way as may cause what is in those thoughts to materialize in the physical world.

However, we'll only do this well and properly if we can fully integrate the world of our suffering with the world of the sublime. Perhaps an equivalent way to say this is that as long as we need "won't power", that implies there's a conflict going inside us between "we will" and "we won't". The tug-of-war between "I will" and "I won't" uses up most of one's energy (at all levels), which then causes us to manifest much less than what we may have wished for. This isn't about force.
Here I suggest that forcefully saying "I will" will implicitly be force against the "I won't".

TraineeHuman

27th February 2021, 00:31

Very early in this thread I was asked whether I had any genes from an aristocratic family. The implication behind that question was that members of the original genuine royal families possessed a greater proportion of alien genes. And that with such genes there comes a greater natural propensity than "normal" to access intuitive or psychic or superconscious abilities. (That's because the human race as we know it is relatively young, and older alien races will usually have evolved extra abilities.)

So I'd like to say a little (well, it's a long story) about my background in regard to that. My mother came from Lithuania, but she did tell me she was (almost-) half French. And she did tell me how in Lithuania one of her first cousins (also half-French) was officially Vice President until the Russian invasion in June 1941, but behind the scenes he was very much the president. In addition, one of her uncles (again, half-French from that royal family in ancestry) was the richest man in the country. He had created, and effectively controlled, the textile industry there, which was very much the country's biggest employer. (Lithuania has always grown much linen even though it's also all dairy country and lakes.) He, and not the President, had the royal box at the opera (which was a big deal in the early twentieth century). Although my mother didn't explicitly spell it out, her nonverbal behavior and her thinking said that this was a continuation of the French crown, in control of Lithuania. The cousin and the uncle very often spent three-day or four-day weekends at my mother's family's primary residence, That was at a scenic location by the country's second largest river. The cousin and the uncle openly claimed to my mother's family that they were the mini-cabinet that actually ran the country. Various other cousins of my mother's were also in prominent positions. For instance, three first cousins were professors of theology at the Vatican, and one of them had greater seniority than any other professor at the Vatican. (However, there was obviously something there at the Vatican that gave them no interest in advancing to cardinalhood.) Just by the way, Lithuanian is the oldest surviving Indo-European language, although there are older languages such as Basque and Hungarian, which are Atlantean languages. Lithuanian was the initial language spoken in the Indus Valley, from about 3400 BC, and was the lamguage that Krishna spoke when he was king. Two very closely related but slightly less old languages are Sanskrit and Old Prussian.

Louis XVI had had two children, a son and a daughter, who lived on and were not guillotined. As far as I know, my mother was descended mostly from the daughter's descendants. I know there was a certain amount of inbreeding -among my ancestors -- certainly second cousins marrying, and one marriage between first cousins (bad enough, but also Louis XIV had married his first cousin). Louis XVI's daughter settled in Livonia, which today is part of Latvia, but not so far from the Lithuanian border. I seem to have inherited surprisingly few health problems from the inbreeding, all things considered, although given my build I have abnormally short arms and legs and an abnormally large skull (with a hint of conehead) and very large chest and feet. I also have terrible circulation in my legs and used to have a very, very slow metabolic rate, so that for my first 35 years my body would feel terrible throughout the mornings and it seemed impossible for me not to be overweight. Still, not so bad.

In 1800 Napoleon directed his troops to spend a fortnight in Lithuania having their R&R, prior to their entering White Russia and Russia. Napoleon was something of a puppet, in that behind the scenes he did whatever the French aristocrats told him to do. Eight of my great great great grandfathers were officers in Napoleon's army. It turned out that by the end of the two weeks' R&R they all got engaged to Lithuanian women, and that those marriages had all been pre-planned by the officers' parents. The R&R took place by the banks of the same river as my mother's main parental home. In fact, it would have been somewhere very close to it. Seven of the eight officers who were my ancestors were French royals, and the eighth was a Hapsburg (Prussian) royal.

I've read on the internet that Louis XVI's male child eventually started the Peysore family, and some claim that's the world's richest family today. I don't really know anything about it, other than that Princess Diana was a descendant of his. I do know that my mother apparently considered Queen Elizabeth to have not come from a true enough bloodline, and maybe that explains why Charles was told a long time ago that he would have to marry either Diana's sister or Diana (to link up with the French royal line).

As far as descent from alien races in the distant past goes, looking at my family and my cousins I have to say that there must have been a number of different alien races (maybe four or more) involved in my family's origins. For instance, everyone seemed to consider my brother and myself to be very unlike in temperament and personality. Similarly, some of my cousins seem very different indeed in their personalities even when they're siblings.

There's much written about "the illuminati" on the internet that would seem to me very exaggerated or fantasy if applied to any of my relatives. Then again, I never went to any weird meetings etc, and my mother emigrated to Australia and just lived an ordinary life (presumably unlike her mother, I suspect). Well, ordinary except that she was certainly very clairvoyant. In her mind she could play herself a detailed movie of literally everything I ever did, even when she hadn't been present. I must admit I didn't like her lack of respect for my privacy in this way. I have no doubt this was the way her mother and older siblings had brought her up, and she seemed to think that this was what any mother does. She was also in the habit of communicating with me as much via telepathy as through spoken words, and seemed to think nothing of it, given that I was her child.

She also brought me up in the "iron fist in a velvet glove" mode, which no doubt the children of all royal families used to be brought up in, and I wouldn't be surprised if they still are today. I'll bet the magazines will never tell you directly about that -- or if they try, they'll make it sound unbelievable as well. The "velvet glove" part meant that I was given much more affection and pampering than a child normally gets, plus huge cultivation of my sense of sovereignty, plus entitlement (i.e., I was fairly often spoilt). The "iron fist" part was pretty baldly a contradiction of this. Yes, it did involve a certain degree of psychological torture, but certainly no conscious sadism. From infancy, my mother would induce anxiety and fear, and often guilt, in me whenever I failed to be obedient, or failed to learn quickly. And the standards demanded were really tough. It would take me to almost my mid-thirties before I fully learnt how to stop walking on eggshells in my dealings with others -- although it's also true that habits of behaviour in rebellion to that would sometimes take over instead, from age nine onward.

To some degree I got to con my mother into relaxing "the fist". For one thing, I was a born rebel. I don't mean politically or socially, but I was very independent-minded and a lateral thinker by nature. So I openly defied "the fist", from age two on. Somehow I sold it to my mother that this defiance was charming. I think she secretly would have liked to rebel too, and also I was her favourite child so she sometimes, in fact fairly often, made excuses for me. Or for whatever reason, she learned to often support and enjoy that defiance.

My poor old father got "the fist" alright too, and he became an alcoholic as a result. I can hear people saying: "No-one can make someone else become an alcoholic. It's a condition one brings on by oneself, initially through one's own choice." Yes, I hear that, but I still say that but for my mother (with whom I did have a very strong and affectionate bond) I think he would never have become that way. That's "the fist". "The fist" is very tough. Somehow I managed to con my mother into letting go of "the fist" quite often in her relationship with me. But to what extent she managed to let go of it, or to fail to be strongly influenced by it, in any other relationships, I'm not sure. I think she had been thoroughly conditioned into using it. She divorced my father and re-married so I had a stepfather, but he also became at least a mild alcoholic.

I don't think that the only reason why some alien races must have introduced "the fist" was so that they could control the human race in certain ways. I think it also had something to do with keeping the "flame" of intuitive abilities alive in the rulers so that they would hopefully have greater access to wisdom and true understanding. When I say "intuitive", I don't primarily mean psychic abilities or skills, but faculties of the soul, which lives with at least one "foot" in the formless worlds. People sometimes, in my opinion, abuse the word "intuitive" or "intuition" to refer to psychic skills. One place where the soul does speak to part of us directly is in our dreams. But you can recall a dream by remembering its details and writing them down the instant you wake up. Then you can look at the standard meanings of the symbols in your dream and thereby intellectually/critically analyze what it was about. But that's not what I mean by using the intuition. Using the intuition means you can write the dream down and then you can activate a direct knowing or direct seeing of what the dream was really about. I believe I can do this, with my own dreams and also the dreams of others, and I believe I've proved that to various individuals not on the Forum).

TraineeHuman

7th March 2021, 00:09

I'd like to briefly explain here some aspects of how the way manifestation occurs is, usually, primarily through the power of awareness, the power of attention, which also does, at the beginning of each time it's used, involve the use of strong concentration.
It doesn't occur, directly or centrally, through the use of will power, nor, usually, through "the power of positive thinking" (but it does require genuine "positive being").

There are many notions and many influences that, historically, have gotten tangled up here, I suspect sometimes originally with the deliberate aim of misleading. But I want to talk mostly just about what really works.

Firstly, let's look briefly at how psychic healing works (or my understanding of how it works). What I do is initially use strong concentration to locate and "see" or "feel" the bioenergy field of the unwell individual. Once I've located them, the concentration seems to automatically transform itself into awareness. Then I just simply experience the energy inside the client's body and energy field. If they're very ill, or supposedly terminal, that's always a touch uncomfortable to bear. In fact, with supposedly terminal cases I always seem to somehow get the smell of vomit, which I don't find completely easy to bear but I know I have to bear it. plus strong feelings of despair and staleness. Somehow, my awareness seems to heal all of the above, just by shining "light" on it, so to speak. The client's self-healing abilities somehow then become free to activate themselves. (That's if the individual wants to be healed. Some terminal clients have already (perhaps unconsciously) decided they want to die, and put up an icy cold energy field that closes off any healing energy's getting through.)

What I'm saying is that the healing always occurs principally through my paying intense attention to, and being totally open to experiencing, the client's unwell energy. (And then the client begins to do the same.) It's not done through my using will power, other than my making sure I stick with it and bear the initial unpleasantness. And in my experience, that "will power" really just amounts to my using sufficient concentration, mostly at the beginning.

I claim that what happens in such psychic healing is, roughly, a good model of how any kind of manifestation actually works, and not just the manifesting of good health. Attention, or awareness, does require some concentration at its beginnings. But one then gets so absorbed into the blossoming of awareness that one kind of kicks that ladder away.

Another phenomenon I'd like to look at here is the practice of "one-pointedness", which Zen Buddhism has always regarded as vital and central to its practice. Obviously, "one-pointed" involves initial concentration on whatever "point" is involved, concentration to the exclusion of everything else. The Japanese kamikaze pilots used it effectively in the second world war. But notice that if one is one-pointed enough then one's concentration brings in the whole consciousness, the whole being. In this way, after hopefully a short while the concentration gets transformed into being total in what one is doing. But being total means operating at (at least) a soul level, with genuine direct access to one's intuitive abilities and intuitive knowledge. That level of reality is where all manifestation, all creation, and all insight-based knowledge, comes from. Concentration, which by its nature is narrow and exclusive and restricted, gets replaced by something wholistic and relational and integrative.

When religious individuals pray, or even, as they claim, chat with "God", what actually happens is that, if they're lucky, one of their guardian angels does hear their request for help of some kind, and may well then organize a creative solution to some problem. For example. if there is a conflict with someone else, they may organize something with one of that individual's guardian angels. Earlier in this thread, Joe Akulis referred to some books by an individual who conducted empirical studies and research which seemed to show that such help does occur at times.

TraineeHuman

18th April 2021, 06:01

Early in this thread I've mentioned the oversoul. Here I'd like to say a little about the oversoul chakra,
and about the problem of not progressing further than having one's third eye opened.

I don't myself approve of stressing the chakras per se too much. Rather, I'm usually interested in unblocked
chakras only as indicators of successful progress to some certain stage. (Or in blocked chakras as a rough guide to
areas that need attention).

However, the oversoul chakra looks stunningly beautiful, to anyone who has the clairvoyant "eyes" to see it. Its center
is about eight inches above the middle of the head. Its shape is spherical, and it reaches to almost the bottom of the chin, but there are strucures within it somewhat rather like a gigantic snowflake.
You may have seen an illustration of "the thousand petal lotus" above the head of the Buddha or of some other sage.
Yes, that's the oversoul chakra. Its color and some other details change as one develops it further, but
initially it shines ever so brilliantly yet quite blurry-edged in shades of almost electric-looking violet.

The third eye chakra has that violet color also. Once the third eye has been opened, at first what you see, in
my observation, is the pineal gland lit up by that violet color, rather like a neon tube the size and shape of a
finger, in the middle of the head. As the third eye develops further, there develops a violet "cloud" and aura
above and around much of the upper half of the head. At this point one can also physically feel the apparent
steel-like frame around the upper head that is what AwakeInADream in 2013 called the "football helmet", that
Druno Melchizedek had also talked about.

The next stage is the opening of the crown chakra. This looks pure white, and extends above the head. Actually
it's just the full extension of the third eye chakra but initially for some years (and thereafter too) it feels
like a double crown -- two concentric circles or ovals -- on the top of one's head.

Vivekananda was the first teacher to bring Yoga to the West. I knew someone who heard him speak here in Sydney
on his visit in 1959. At that visit he had said that if you can clearly feel the energy or the weight of the crown
chakra above your head then you can be confident you'll basically achieve freedom (from unhappiness) in this
lifetime. My friend who was there found this very reassuring, as she could certainly feel the upward flow of
energy through her crown chakra. However, unfortunately very few people there could do so. (She happened to be
extremely clairvoyant and so she knew this was the case.)

I believe Vivekananda was right. If you can feel that upward flow above your head at will and quite tangibly,
then that means your oversoul chakra is in the process of opening, or has already opened. Yay!

I'd now like to turn to what I've noticed seems, to me, to be one of the biggest reasons why some well-intentioned
aspirants get stuck at the third eye opened stage and have trouble getting further. There's a famous anecdote
about Basho, who is considered to have been one of the greatest Zen masters of all. Basho was visiting a Zen
monastery when he saw a monk very assiduously polishing a tile over and over. Basho made a big point of
remarking that that would never get the monk who was doing the polishing any further than having a super-clean
tile. Basho was of course deliberately speaking symbolically, at a few different levels at once. It strikes me
very strongly, though, that his remark seems to precisely address something I see many individuals with an opened
third eye do. They try very very hard to "be good", and to be very faithful followers of some orthodoxy. As I
have heard one such individual say a number of times very emphatically, it's a matter of cleaning more and more
mud out of the water of the lake (of consciousness), and then, they believe, they'll be free with a capital "F".
Wrong! What I observe is that some such individuals make their third eye chakra glow so cleanly, so purely and
brightly, that I get reminded of Basho's wise comment. Eventually these individuals do open up their crown chakra,
and then they keep doing the same super-polishing process to try and make that whiter than white -- though I've
noticed that the crown chakra won't allow itself to be fully "whitewashed" in this sort of way.

Yes, we do need to do our best to create good things in our environment, and to avoid harm to others as far as we
reasonably can. But there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio. One thing that comes to mind is how in
the Zen tradition the "crazy wisdom" Zen masters are and were regarded by many as the greatest masters of all.
Some of them simply and sincerely laughed at pretty much everything, yet managed to do it without causing offence.
Ah, if we could only all have a drop of that at hand in ourselves!

Here in Sydney I like to occasionally go to the weekly public guest talk at the Theosophical Society. The TS here
does certainly a very good and well-informed job indeed of finding a different speaker every week with some
genuine expertise in some area of spiritual experience or knowledge. Yet I see some of the most serious "students"
still polishing their tiles ever yet again, making them a cleaner and shinier purple than before, if that is even
possible in several cases. But I believe I don't always see anyone with an activated oversoul, and if I do, it's usually
about one or two only, it's much more often in the audience than in the speaker for the day. A few years ago I used
to go to the Anthroposophical Society too. They were much the same, except usually there were many in the audience
who hadn't even opened their third eye yet.

I do also certainly come across individuals who've opened their oversoul chakra naturally, without so much contact with
meditation teachers or societies etc.

Ankle Biter

6th July 2021, 05:34

Have you ever read this title (https://clairvision.org/books/ate/awakening-the-third-eye-excerpts.html) TraineeHuman?

I read it many years back and got some good pointers that helped me in opening third eye, which I had thought I was already achieving before but then upon experiencing what you've described as "football helment" was a (pun intended) real eye opener. <laughs at own joke>

TraineeHuman

6th July 2021, 06:18

Mashika

6th July 2021, 06:34

Ankle Biter

6th July 2021, 07:59

Hi Ankle Biter,

Thank you for that. As far as I know, most of the information that the Clairvision School puts out seems to be very accurate and thorough. Unfortunately, though, I read very little about spirituality at all these days. I consider that the whole basis of understanding spirituality, at least for me, is one's own direct experience. Direct experience is the only thing that's totally certain (though there are also self-evident truths -- e.g., it's also pretty certain that two plus two is four). One has to go within because the entire universe itself, including the Divine or heavenly worlds, is all within you. (And that's because the only way you ever know anything about the universe is from and as your-own-perception-of-the-universe, full stop.)

Then one needs to "decipher" one's experiences, in the sense of understanding or explaining to one's self what they mean. But the direct experiences need to come first, and not the other way around. The work (of self-mindfulness, of meditation, of facing one's self and the world and universe) always needs to come first. One can really only do that by becoming extremely good at observing what's really there, which includes some form of practical philosophy and psychology and sometimes sociology. The info you've quoted from Clairvision seems very accurate and so I won't try to add anything to that right now. But we need to question literally everything. Only that way can we know when it's very accurate.

I hear ya there, I think the total number of things I've read on the matter totals 2 books, the linked one I read cover to cover but the other I probably didn't and can't even recall what it was other than it gave me some tips on breathing exercises. Otherwise like you say I've only ever really gone with my intuition and direct experiences. With regards to OBE's there were some years of experiences already before I sought out any external information like a book or other literature... I mean it was probably very very early internet or even pre-internet days so accessibility to resources was quite limited even if I wanted more. But that was fine because the experiences alone were very full and I gained a lot of personal insight from them. Also I found that if I ever discussed in person something about OBE's to someone the conversation inevitably would include things like using symbols or crystals or oils and endless other stimuli which never 'resonated' for me, not to diminish any value they have for others in their own experiences, but from my own perspective felt the best approach was from nothingness. Like a complete emptying of mind of anything and everything without form or substance and only being in the present moment of naked consciousness. There was a bit of 'fluff' like that in the book from Clairvision school but yeah just was saying that it had some nice bits that allowed me to polish some of the tools already in my shed. (sorry for all the analogies, metaphors, I can't help but paint when I'm writing it seems). Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I have enjoyed this thread over the years.

TraineeHuman

8th July 2021, 04:18

In my latest post, I mentioned how we all have all our self-knowledge somewhere inside us,
waiting to be consciously dug out. From the ancient Indian and ancient Chinese teachings,
though, we have, among other things (such as the concept and reality of the subconscious,
and even of the unconscious which is really still subconscious because the light of our inner
perception still shines through it, ultimately) the notion (and reality) of "the shadpw (self)",
as Jung referred to it. The problem is, we don't know that we don't know whatever
it is that we don't know. Or we don't appreciate its importance.

I'd like to emphasize two components of our shadow that we need to identify, and understand
what their implications have been and still are in our own life. One of these is to identify the
biggest trauma in our life, other than our birth trauma. Normally it will have occurred somewhere
in our first twelve years. However, for some time after it occurred we will have acted strangely
but not realized just how shattered we felt.

Some of the people around us, such as teachers and classmates and certainly our mothers, will
have noticed, but we ourselves may well not have appreciated the magnitude of it -- or we may
have wanted to forget about it as far as we could.

In my own case, the biggest trauma occurred when I was nine and my parents told me they were
going to divorce, and that I would have to choose to remain with one of them but not the other.
The ultimate reason why this was so traumatic for me was to do with why, many lifetimes ago, as
a member of the Guardian Alliance it was decided I needed to gain a deeper understanding of
disharmony. In the (higher) astral dimensions everything and everyone exists in harmony, unlike the
chaos and conflict and contrariness that permeate this world.

The other aspect of your own shadow that I suggest you need to very accurately and precisely identify
and face is:

What is, and was,your conditioning? Well over 50% of your conditioning is (well, was) your parents.
They thought they were writing on a blank slate, silly them! You need to be a very good detective here.
What sort of expectations did they really have about you? What did they
consider would make you a "success" in this life? What was the conditioning they themselves were
operating under, unconsciously?
In the Old Testament there is a phrase that gets repeated quite a number
of times. "The sins of the fathers will be visited upon their children, even
unto the seventh (or ninth, or thirteenth, or fifteenth) generation".
The number of generations nominated varies, but the point is that
the conditioning gets passed on and on, unconsciously and unresolved.

You can't get rid of your conditioning overnight, by any means. It will
have so many layers, so many interweaves. Typically, the "emotional core"
of it seems to get laid down somewhere between the age of nine months to
eighteen months. At around age four, or five, or six, people develop
"childhood amnesia" of what happened before that age. But that amnesia
is there only because prior to that age the child's consciousness was
primarily in the astral, and with the right sort of work it's possible to recover
what happened at earlier ages too.

TraineeHuman

26th July 2021, 09:17

The following video covers quite a variety of subjects. I guess they're all quite relevant, often very relevant, in some way at least, to understanding what abundance (minus any greed) truly implies. As he demonstrates, "abundance" is really a deceptively complex and deep issue. I'm posting it here because I see many if not most aspects of "The Law of Attraction" as a psyop that was being very energetically promoted around the beginning of the twentieth century (and in the second half of the nineteenth century too).

Sadhguru seems to be sometimes coming up with and very clearly and accurately expressing some outstandingly good information lately.

xK67fAV3zLs

Ankle Biter

16th August 2021, 19:32

Hi TraineeHuman,

I read a thread on Avalon about Horus Ra, on there it said "The new age awakening can be dangerous as there are portals for dark forces to manifest" meaning people can get a psychic attack, this is why I have stopped meditating. What are your thoughts on that?

Sue

Hi Sue,

In all my lifelong experience (more than six decades, since I started naturally in childhood), proper meditation is generally the most powerful means there is of summoning positive and protective and benevolent forces and (benevolent, positive) light, and also all inspiration. (In some forms of meditation this can occur more subtly, but more subtle is ultimately more powerful.) It increases one's "level" of positive energy. Much of this is too subtle for most people to observe, but the light that's generated actually dissolves some of the very many little darker energies inside an individual. In my experience, it's the key to Heaven (and the only legitimate key I know of, though I guess I consider "deep prayer" to be effectively a form of meditation). In all my experience, it's also exactly the energy that one has to use to rescue individuals who are trapped in some hell. The subject of how to protect oneself as far as possible is more complex than it may seem, but speaking generally, proper meditation is all to do with taking ioneself onto stronger ground.

Also in all my experience, the only times when a "normal" person will experience psychic attack seem to be either during a drug episode (and, incidentally, marijuana is a very strong drug from a psychic point of view, I'm afraid, unless perhaps the individual is very, very strong and very, very advanced) or in a drug flashback, or at night while sleeping or going to sleep or maybe when having half woken up from sleep. The exceptions to that, in my experience, are, firstly and primarily, someone who has major emotional problems. (I can't make any judgments about any possible emotional problems, if such exist, of anyone writing in the Horus Ra thread, as I haven't met them in person and therefore it would be totally unprofessional of me to profess to diagnose them long-distance.) It's also the very rare case that some individuals seem to have very weak ego boundaries and that makes them overly suggestible or overly vulnerable to such things as psychic attacks. Such individuals shouldn't try to meditate, but should avail themselves of appropriate psychotherapy and also of plenty of healing.

A major facet of meditation, in my experience, is that it gradually and seamlessly teaches one how to come to know and gradually submit to the Divine will better and better. One normally can't just decide one day to follow the Divine will like that was some New Year's resolution.

Meditation does a great many things, and most of the posts in this thread are about them. There are so many, I can't even begin to summarize them or point towards them in one post. But as Jesus said: "Watch always." As I believe I've explained in this thread in huge detail, such "watching", and its mastery, is the very center of what meditation is all about, and the most central skill within meditation.

Also, one doesn't necessarily succeed in summoning positive forces or positive energy just by saying the name of Jesus or calling for your guardian angels or whatever. The safer and more effective way to do it is to first rise to a higher level of awareness. I know of no more effective, or as safe, a way of doing so than (proper) meditation. I would insist that by stopping your meditation you're now probably opening yourself up to greater influence by dark forces.

Do you have any other comments?

Hi TH, would you please elaborate on 'proper' meditation just a little bit when able please?

I'm reminded of times in my early OBEs, induced through meditation, where I encountered energies that didn't play nice. Other times I met very uplifting positive ones but my process or approach was always the same way. So I'm not sure why I had such contrasting experiences.

:flower:

TraineeHuman

17th August 2021, 08:27

Hi, Ankle Biter. Obviously, describing what right or "correct" meditation really is must be a very long story. I think that seems obvious because traditionally people spent many full-time years with a master teacher of some sort, trying to learn (surely?) to do precisely this. And it does take years -- for everyone, I believe. Not to mention endless work on yourself, throughout those years.

Also, proper meditation, as I understand it, involves making the (ordinary) mind go quiet (or, at least, soft enough in volume that you have no trouble ignoring it). So it's a type of "not-doing", which may at first sound paradoxical. It involves learning surrender in other ways than that too. But the ultimate fruits of each such type of surrender, when carried out fully enough, are the finding of true joy.

One remark I should make to begin with, in passing, is that as far as I have seen, very many would-be super-excellent meditators usually aren't quite doing meditation in the optimum way. (I'm glad you brought this question up!) Ideally, they should get some feedback and training on the quality of what they are actually doing, from a master of neditation who, probably, would need to be psychic enough to observe very accurately what they are doing (in the astral worlds and even in the intuitive/soul worlds) when they (supposedly) are meditating very well. Hopefully that master teacher could even telepathically or clairvoyantly or in however way heal the quality of their efforts.

Traditionally, it was considered that one could learn how to meditate optimally as a result of some sort of "psychic osmosis" of the (higher, or even divine) energy of the guru or master. And this was considered to be done primarily when the guru or master was, explicitly, transmitting kundalini light healing energy to the members of a group that one was in. Also, whenever a guru held darshan, traditionally he was, and today still is, required to "transmit" precisely that, even while also (usually) talking to the group.

So, the master transmits. But does his or her audience know how to receive that "transmission" fully and truly? Unfortunately, they usually don't. But at least they drink in just a little each time, and hopefully incorporate it into their own being and meditating, thereby lifting their level at least a tiny bit higher in some way. You may have heard how the Buddha chose his successor purely on the basis that the latter individual was the only one who proved able to receive what the Buddha was transmitting in his Sunflower Sermon, which was carried out without the Buddha's physically speaking any words.

Still, there are certain indicators along the way with regard to what level of quality your meditation has reached. One very major one is that of reaching the point where you have mastery at emptying all thoughts out of your conscious mind and leaving it in a purity or stillness which the ordinary thinking mind's ceaseless chattering can't penetrate into enough to subvert it in any way. From that point you can go into pure looking, pure seeing, instead of being swept along by thinking. Evil forces or entities or whatever can only ever get to you by making you keep thinking about them in some way. So, learn how to hold your mind still, and you can be finished with them forever. I don't know if this answers your issue, Ankle Biter. If it doesn't, there are huge topics to consider here.

As far as encountering energies or whatever that didn't play nice, it's common to encounter beings or energies in the astral that have deceptive facades, and some who are intentionally mischievous or would like to trap you in some way.. The more fully you manage to hold the stillness in you, the further your perception will penetrate into seeing their true essence. After all, if you found yourself in the seediest area of a large city you weren't familiar with, common sense would tell you to check on what the strangers you came across told you, or perhaps pretended to be.

Ankle Biter

17th August 2021, 11:33

Thanks TraineeHuman. I believe part of the reason I joined this forum way back was because of these experiences and not knowing anyone that was familiar with what I wanted to talk about or learn more about so I am thankful for your input. This thread too might have been one of the first ones that I sought out as well possibly for some kind of feedback. I kept my question in #2793 somewhat vague and open just so that you could respond from an exogenous point of view and not influenced through any details I might have included.

Well my beginnings in meditation were very rough as is expected in any new pursuit, a lot of noise, mind wandering on distracting thoughts or sensations in my body etc. But eventually though consistent practice and personalized technique modified on something I read maybe in this book (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28497218-astral-projection-for-beginners) my mind started to go quiet, took me at least the best part of 1 year.

there are certain indicators along the way with regard to what level of quality your meditation has reached. One very major one is that of reaching the point where you have mastery at emptying all thoughts out of your conscious mind and leaving it in a purity or stillness which the ordinary thinking mind's ceaseless chattering can't penetrate into enough to subvert it in any way.

As a result of this practice I vividly recall being in states were it felt like my mind was absolutely still and just conscious of being. Most of my meditation I would do at night before bed for what felt like hours, which I reflected on the next day that is because during my meditation I wasn't even thinking about time, sometimes I thought maybe I didn't even (REM) sleep without any feelings of mental or physical fatigue.. quite the opposite! - This notion of stillness of mind feels very much right. Also you may have noticed my signature quoting Lao Tzu which is something that resonated as a deep truth upon reading it the first time. Also because I knew from prior experiences there was a flip side to that coin.

The initial motivation for going on this learning road was because prior, I experienced accidental OBEs and that's where I met with energies that sought to take something from me. The aim wasn't to get back on the Astral plane via the meditation to engage in some type of spiritual warfare but only to strengthen and be more resolute in the sense of self. So that daily life was more about being than existing and interactions with people, dealing with emotions, general wellness, overcoming addictions etc etc all improved.

I believe the OBEs were a consequence of improved quality of meditation because they seemed to go hand in hand with the improving state of mental stillness almost on a 1:1 basis. So then after developing and refining the practice into one of better quality did these encounters take on less of a sense of threat or risk but rather subsequent encounters and experiences becoming far more positive and benevolent.

But all this was a long time ago and since then I've lost much of what I developed. Nowadays, and with the current state of the world, I find myself experiencing similar sensations as I did at the beginning and at other certain low resonating states in my life's journey, as though dark energies were attacking at the gates and trying to get in. Once again I am getting a familiar strong compulsion to reconnect and fortify as before but held some reservation about whether or not my past practices were flawed or lacking in something.

Your answers therefore have plugged some of the gaps in my thoughts and credit to you for going on the very little that I said and hopefully you understand my reasoning for that. At the same time I welcome any other input/questions or feedback now that we've hashed out some thoughts in more detail. Thanks again TH.

TraineeHuman

18th August 2021, 00:39

Ankle Biter, you wrote: "But all this was a long time ago and since then I've lost much of what I developed.
Nowadays, and with the current state of the world, I find myself experiencing similar sensations as I did at the
beginning and at other certain low resonating states in my life's journey, as though dark energies were attacking
at the gates and trying to get in. Once again I am getting a familiar strong compulsion to reconnect and fortify as
before but held some reservation about whether or not my past practices were flawed or lacking in something."

I have to say no, no, no. I happen to know that the truth is you haven't lost any of what you had.
I'm very strongly convinced, and have observed, through and with discussion, in other people and in myself, that we
never lose whatever gains we have made in awareness or spirituality. (Well, with a few rather rare exceptions,
like if we were to have a lobotomy, or brain damage, and so on. Drugs also often do that, to some extent at
least.) The trouble is, we make certain achievements (such as being able to astral travel or to spontaneously
detach and take a bird's-eyeview, or get an accurate over all feel) and then such skills become so second nature to us that we stop noticing that
we're still doing them. For instance, we no longer need to make a song and dance about exiting our physical body
because (though we may not realize it at all) we learn to instantly be the seer of the viewpoint of how things look
outside of our body. So, we often progress to a more subtle (and more "advanced") version of the same thing, but
it can be so subtle now that we (mistakenly) don't give ourselves any credit for anything like that any more.
Everyone doing spiritual or psychic development does this. I'm absolutely certain that we don't (normally) lose all
our spiritual/metaphysical advances, at all. Quite the contrary. We just learn to ignore that they're still
there, quietly operating as part of us, now. The memory of something is not the thing itself, at all. We're here
to eventually, at some point, outgrow all of our memories. We move on to noticing or working on other things, where
we still have challenges. The novelty wears off. We become (very often maybe silent and unrecognised) healers of
the people we live with and the people we work with. To give one example, there are, for instance, all sorts of
negative leylines and grids in or around any location, and an experienced meditator or astral traveller / etc will
over time deactivate them completely, without even needing to consciously put attention on doing that. Of course,
some (many) individuals will be creating negative energies of one kind or other repeatedly, usually without
realizing they are, and then that will need to be healed. When you were astral travelling you may have noticed how
amazingly chaotic the psychic (telepathic) world is because so many individuals are fighting psychic wars with
their friends or family or coworkers. You probably can't clear all that away because there's ever so much of it
going on everywhere, but you'll still heal it overall significantly, I assure you, even though you may not even
notice that you're doing all (or any) of that psychic healing.

To give a couple of personal examples of other things like this. At the risk of sounding boastful, let me say that
about thirty or so years ago I somehow became good at experiencing most of my body apparently disappear during deep
meditation, and eventually even while I was walking or working or doing almost anything in daily life. When in
meditation, if I tried to look at my chest or certain other areas, I would just see a kind of black hole,that felt
awfully light too. Also, I learnt to "astral travel" without needing to use an astral (or mental, or causal) body.
I could just "see" what was there at another location, without needing to go there in some natural "vehicle".
Also, for decades I would notice that sometimes my body would just have ankles and elbows but a huge apparent hole
everywhere between. I guess the people who become remote viewers start from having this natural ability too. But
perhaps the biggest reason why we stop noticing that we have these abilities activated and liberated within us is
as follows. The spiritual journey is ultimately one of coming down from the mountaintop and into the marketplace.
So, in the marketplace we focus on adapting to it and achieving hopefully constructive things there. So, in our
focus the psychic or spiritual abilities are only in the background, making them kind of invisible to ourselves.
But that doesn't mean they aren't as active as before, just because we're focused on solving practical or mundane
issues and problems.

Ankle Biter

18th August 2021, 10:40

I believe you when you say nothing is lost. My appreciation to you for all that you wrote TH and I will contemplate on these thoughts as I navigate through the marketplace.

:star:

TraineeHuman

20th August 2021, 07:32

I'd like to add just a small piece of information about the question: how does one best and most fully and correctly receive the guru's "water of life" that is the kundalini light healing he or she is emanating?

There's that (true) saying of Jesus that to those who already have shall even more be given, and to them the most will be given. You may say that's no help or encouragement to the ones who need it the most. But I would reiterate how we (normally) don't ever lose what we've gained in our best spiritual experiences and in our other personal breakthroughs. So, yes, you should be able to "receive" more fully even if today or this week happens to be one of those times when things in your life seem overwhelming.

So, go and do that meditation retreat or whatever even though the "high" you get from it doesn't last -- or, rather, I would say it only doesn't seem to last because it will have lifted you permanently onto a somewhat higher level, which now deceptively feels like it's back to "normal" and "everyday". That old coward the human mind is a strange thing. It has an enormous ability to kid itself to your own disadvantage.

TraineeHuman

14th October 2021, 01:12

In a few posts, often some time ago, I've talked about the formless worlds, or about formlessness. In this post I'd like to give you more examples of instances of the concept of formlessness in Western thought.

To begin with, though, I'd like to point out that one Western concept I've already talked about a little that's a good example of formlessness is the concept of an infinity. This is a very, very central concept in mathematics. (And it's used with little consideration of what it may truly mean in reality.) In various ways, it is what a considerable part of modern pure mathematics is about (as I'll elaborate on a little further below). Physicists and astronomers and NASA-type workers and so on utilize mathematics (if only through their use of scientific computers) to try to increase their knowledge regarding the physical universe. In so doing, they are automatically referencing mathematical concepts of infinity, such as that of a limit (which involves the concept of the infinitely small). Yes, even the notion of the infinitely small inextricably involves formlessness because it involves reference to "infinitely".

Just by the way, the concept of a "limit" in the mathematical sense was formulated and implemented by Leibniz. Leibniz was, among other things, the long-time Head of the German Masons. His biggest dream and hope was of the future creation of "universal calculating machines". Of course, we now know these as computers or AI. He believed these would be able to answer literally every question and tell us how to solve literally all our problems, and generally tell us how to live best. (Sounds to me like an early version of scientism. And coming from the head of the Masons!) He revived formal logic, and helped ensure its development continued into the future. He knew that one day it would provide the necessary mathematicological "language" that would underpin the savior universal super-calculating machines.

Getting back to formlessness, may I suggest to you that the notion of "(empty) space' always involves formlesness? Actually it does also involve SOME qualities of structure mixed in there. The nineteenth century mathematician/physicist Riemann (and NOT Einstein in the twentieth century, who was just stealing the credit for Riemann's work here) basically proved that space is normally "curved" in certain ways.

Aristotle had pointed out that physical reality was (supposedly) made out of form, "matter," and space. The trouble was, though, that whenever physicists looked into what matter was, all they ultimately ever found was more forms plus empty space. Eventually, it became clear that all matter was an illusion. Quarks or strings or whatever weren't matter, but they were interrelations, or placeholders. So, then, according to physics, the physical world is made out of forms and certain types of formlessness.

There are many, many other ways we encounter formlessness that I could describe. But maybe this is enough to start with. Well, just one more. Many mathematicians consider a man named Tarski to have been the leading mathematician of the twentieth century. This is because of his famous indefinability theorem. What it proves is that the very concept of truth is itself absolutely indefinable.

Ankle Biter

14th October 2021, 03:43

Getting back to formlessness, may I suggest to you that the notion of "(empty) space' always involves formlesness? Actually it does also involve SOME qualities of structure mixed in there.

There was a short video I shared (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?3596-Up-At-The-Ranch-And-Beyond&p=1456259&viewfull=1#post1456259) a few days back which the motivation for sharing was along the lines of what I think you're expressing in your post here TH. There's the crazy big macro and the crazy small micro.. particularly the comparison of a nutrino, itself so so so small, but as large as the observable universe when compared to the Planck length...or just a regular hydrogen atom being essentially 99.9999% empty space, almost as good as saying there's nothing there!

Yet we are surrounded by form and structure expressed in it's pure form as geometry. Take for instance a circle.. geometrically and aesthetically it is perfect. Everything about its form says balance and precision yet in the underlying it is hinged on infinity. The ratio of the circumference to the diameter.. pi. And in the platonic solids you'll find all manner of irrational numbers such as golden ratio etc. Infinities are everywhere if nowhere. My hat goes off to those very out there thinking mathematicians you've mentioned, also people like Leonhard Euler & Srinivasa Ramanujan who were wonderful counters of things and tried to find the bridges between these seemingly disjointed yet inseparable concepts.

When computing power came in to the mix and Benoit Mandelbrot entered the arena picking up from Gaston Julia, we got visual representations of the fruit what Cantor called 'Mathematical monsters (http://ifsa.my/articles/fractals-where-math-nature-and-art-meets)' producing fractals. Contained within the landscape of infinite chaos is order again, like Fibonacci series, and other precise sequences on which our dominant perception of reality is constructed. Shape, order, balance etc.

So then if I can circle back to what we discussed in post 2793 (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?52121-The-Higher-Self-and-transcendent-experience-including-OBEs&p=1446434&viewfull=1#post1446434) regards to 'proper meditation'.. one of the ways I like to get there is during breathing and just before getting started I'll quickly survey around the room to pick something at random (let's say lamp) and observe the 'form'. Getting a feel in the mind's eye of not just its shape but the order surrounding that and the rigid rules that govern its symmetry etc.. where all sorts of infinities surround it, only to understand that these exist because of something that is intuitively nonsensical and made of stuff that might not even be there.... one could go round and round forever back and forth. hence the only viable thing is to let go.

.... from there a state of consciousness of empty (different from the empty where the chatter is removed).. emptying of form leaving only state of 'is' to experience. If it is even anything at all.

TraineeHuman

14th October 2021, 05:12

Very interesting, Ankle Biter. These days, after years of meditating, I normally start my meditating in what may be practically the same way as you. I like to briefly "anchor" or "ground" myself first, which involves very mindfully becoming aware usually of what sensations my bottom is feeling and where my body's currently located in the room. I also very briefly throw a little energy out from solar plexus to the ceiling and the floor and then back into my body. I also usually very briefly focus on my breath or specifically, like you, on some nearby object or location. I do all this quickly, so it takes well under a minute to do.

You would probably know that in ancient China (and also Japan) the primary concept, underlying all others, was of the universe always being in a state of perfect balance and ultimately harmony, beautiful, intertwined harmony, and including aspects of reality which were at the present given moment undifferentiated. Everything-ness as nothingness. Your post suggests that you tune into something like that too.

I don't know if you additionally always "tune in" to some aspect of mathematical beauty. Yes, I'm also familiar with the little-known fact that mathematics can be experienced and treated as an art form and even in some major respects as the greatest art form of all -- but try to tell a maths class in early high school that! These days, in meditation I tend to just dwell in emptiness, but also to face and smooth out whatever issues from my daily life are coming, because I want meditation to help me get my life more right as well.

Mashika

14th October 2021, 06:44

You would probably know that in ancient China (and also Japan) the primary concept, underlying all others, was of the universe always being in a state of perfect balance and ultimately harmony, beautiful, intertwined harmony, and including aspects of reality which were at the present given moment undifferentiated. Everything-ness as nothingness. Your post suggests that you tune into something like that too.

It's actually not like that, it can be 'measured' on some ways (i'm not sure if using the right word here) but you must avoid thinking that 'everything is balanced' because then there is 'order' and that means nothing can't escape it, not even your raising soul. So you don't grow much more after you learn this concept

If you look at old Japanese room, it's mostly empty, the rooms are very big but no furniture or other things around, only ones are placed in some places around the room, but not in specific locations at all, you know why?

Some here, some there, but nothing is located in exact places, some more to the left, some more to the right, this and that but never everything is measured to be on a very calculated place

That's 'Enso' as you may know it, "The beauty of imperfection"
https://ensotherapy.co/enso-story

The "Zen circle" as its called, which is actually not the real thing but i believe it does explain the concept well, is like this
https://thezenuniverse.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/1_JLPpr0r85X0a7ytoNVgfhw-9806703.jpeg
https://thezenuniverse.org/enso-circle-enlightenment/

The opening of the circle has many interpretations. The open circle is a concept that reflects closely the teaching of the Japanese Zen Buddhism – ensō is an emblem of Zen Buddhism – and it represents and suggests cutting the desire for perfection and allowing the universe to be as it is. This symbol is also used to indicate an instance in which “the mind is free to let the body create”.

But even if i agree with this, i must affirm, very hardly, that there is no "Zen Buddhism", it's either one or the other, Zen came out from Buddhism, but is not a 'shared' experience at all, but that's very very hard to explain

The Japanese practice of drawing the ensō requires that you allow your body to create freely and then observe the result without feeling the urge to modify your actions. According to Buddhist tradition, one should draw the ensō in a single, swift stroke, and is not possible to go back and change the drawing.

Just like life, you may be able to keep going, but the things done, *are done*

I don't know if you additionally always "tune in" to some aspect of mathematical beauty. Yes, I'm also familiar with the little-known fact that mathematics can be experienced and treated as an art form and even in some major respects as the greatest art form of all -- but try to tell a maths class in early high school that!

Doesn't that mean that previous teachers failed to teach properly? As well as parents guide?

These days, in meditation I tend to just dwell in emptiness, but also to face and smooth out whatever issues from my daily life are coming, because I want meditation to help me get my life more right as well.

Don't 'dwell' or get your mind 'still'. It will only put you on a situation where you never advance or challenge yourself to take another step. Otherwise known as "i'm comfortable here, this is peace", which yes and not, it's ego telling you to remain within yourself and not challenge or risk going "out". It's the "I don't need more than this" aspect of spiritual life road, which is not how it's supposed to be

Ankle Biter

14th October 2021, 07:33

Yes, I think I'm always tuned into it, but not at a level to fully grasp what those great mathematicians formulated, not even close lol. Maybe just enough to recognize it play out in a multitude of ways (yet simple) in ordered reality and at the same time witness the ?. Which brings to mind for me the old debate if mathematics is something we invented or discovered... for me it is really hard accepting the former, what's your take TH?.

So yeah in grounding or anchor part of a meditation the tuning in part to me is seeing order and form through something looked at, listened to.. (mathematics in music is a very interesting rabbit hole.), felt etc.. then I guess applying axioms, as within without, as above so below, ying and yang, everything and nothing which all serves as a means to then see both just to then detach to self (can we even?). I think this is kind of the same as what you're saying which happens at the start of a meditation for a minute or so?... This might be what I was trying to say a few posts back about something lost that I used to have..I shouldn't have mentioned in terms of OBE's maybe.

Maybe I didn't know how to write or express it but what you said I think better describes what I meant, getting a state of emptiness before meditating was something i too could reach in few minutes but then after getting distracted and lost in the market place and maybe a dodgy chicken vindaloo later lol, the efficiency of a learned skill was not gone but somewhat diminished in efficiency and needed a tune up in itself. This is probably commonplace for everyone I guess, something chalked up as part of a human experience and line drawn through it every night when we go to sleep and wake up anew in an attempt to smooth out daily life and at least marginally do it a bit more right than before.

Mashika

14th October 2021, 08:08

Ankle Biter

14th October 2021, 10:35

Maybe I didn't know how to write or express it but what you said I think better describes what I meant, getting a state of emptiness before meditating was something i too could reach in few minutes but then after getting distracted and lost in the market place and maybe a dodgy chicken vindaloo later lol, the efficiency of a learned skill was not gone but somewhat diminished in efficiency and needed a tune up in itself.

You are "practicing" and that's a no for Zen, you should not be practicing, you should just "be"

If you practice, you always have a bottom to top view.. "I'll be that"

If you "become" then you "are", and then introspect "who you are", but you already are above the "what is this? stage

Does that make any sense?

Question is, should you "practice" or should just "get to it at once".

Why the wait, If it's been there inside you all along?

I am in agreement with just "be" you're talking about I believe, but I may have been falling over my own words again in an attempt to convey properly this 'practicing' idea I mentioned.

For a moment assume the physical sensation felt in space-time and subsequent perception of reality received directly to our part of self that is the body comprised of matter then we are like an antenna that receives a signal that is information which is confined in mostly the 3D... influencing that are all kinds of stimuli and to choose arbitrarily some examples such as caffeine or sugar or bad chicken curry if you will, lead to variations in quality of signal or range of frequencies perceived, more so when indulged not in moderation... Now I'm not saying that a good signal obtained by good habits and practicing to get to a deep trance like state acts as some kind of upper or lower boundary in the context of 'being'... far from it. but it does pertain to quite real stuff with direct effects which have the ability sweep you up and rip you out of a point of view where it's more a case of mere existing than being.

Abstinence from practicing meditation is another example for me where I feel similar effects, after a long time away from riding a bike as a metaphor for one of the ways to feel this state of 'being' of course not to say its only way to feel this... they say you don't forget how to ride a bike which is the 'if it's been in you there all along why wait'.. yes precisely.. though, after a few drinks or not riding the bike for some time, any subsequent attempts will be for a brief moment.. be a bit wobbly if you are lucky... but you don't ever really forget and can get into the old stride again.

I suppose practicing is a one of several tools as is having specific diet, or a multitude of other ways of interacting we as individuals engaging with life around us that experience affects the antenna and quality of signal or how the signal is interpreted.... not for the purpose to just be still and nothing else. It can extend beyond that as well like stresses that emerge when stuff happens to us. We never forget any of our spiritual learning but sometimes a bump in the road pops up.. we fall off the bike and cry while clutching a sore foot or something.. some tears mixed in with a bit of dirt and small rock embedded in the forehead.

It is my belief that with the practicing the bump in the road might be anticipated and dare I say sometimes aimed for to just get a little bit of air time and doing a little bmx jump to a new level where risk and reward axiom kicks in and you starve off the 'I'm too comfortable here' because it was never about just a physical condition or a sense of perception attained while in meditative state, any less than it's about the ride too.. and who knows what else yet to be discovered and experienced riding through the forest.

(I think perhaps if before I fell over my words and over complicated a simple point then these last paragraphs could be way worse, and it truly is an epic failure haha.. nevertheless I won't delete and leave it in. & let it just 'be').

TL;DR Mashika I think what you say makes sense, I might be thinking similarly :)

TraineeHuman

14th October 2021, 22:23

I started this thread trying to gradually but eventually establish that we all have (or are, or can learn to activate) an inner self, or a deeper self if you like . And that the inner self is without most or all of the undesirable aspects of "self" that often get labelled as "the ego" .

So, it's just a matter of learning to seek, and eventually be able to quickly locate, that inner self, always. Then it's a matter of teaching yourself to step into it more and more often, and even, eventually, to do so in the middle of hellish things going on all around you and doing their best to intrude into you. You just learn to do it, be it, like Mashika says. Keep building that "muscle". Forget about the distractions -- it doesn't matter if you got indigestion tonight, or you clashed with someone or life wasn't kind to you today, or whatever.

Never mind about theorizing regarding the obstacles around you. Poor you. Never mind the chaos and craziness and limitations around you. Instead just learn better and better how to feel the bliss of simply being alive, simply existing. To quote from "Shakespeare": "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in our selves." So, just keep finding the inner self, your very own, and the joy and bliss that are always part of it. Be one-pointed and just do that, over and over. The more you find it, the stronger it gets -- though over time the inner joy does get "normalized" for you --- meaning it's no weaker now but it's quieter because it's become more of a deep part of what you recognize as yourself. Spirituality is all about freedom from unhappiness. First things first (and last). By going straight to the inner self you are going straight to the part of you that has bliss at its center. Don't ever neglect it, ever.

Yes, there are different levels of consciousness or soul or whatever you call it, that you'll develop as you go along. But you don't need to mind too much about what they are, until they've already shown themselves to you directly in your own experience.

Instead, one just needs to build a strong inner silence -- which isn't "nothing", of course, because nothingness is really everythingness in disguise, and so on. That will automatically clear away the mind-clutter and the consciousness-clutter, so that you can see, and so be, the inner self more clearly.

To quote G.K. Chesterton: "The way is all so very plain that we may [well] lose the way".

Ankle Biter

15th October 2021, 01:09

TH In thinking on our discussions yesterday I was reminded of another kind of grounding that is not a part of meditation but felt like sharing for no reason, just something I find myself doing from time to time when out and about.. Say for instance there is a place I might go to often like a certain beach or the woods or even just at the supermarket/mall etc.. My awareness will go to a time when I was there before and the time I was there before that and before that again..

From there I will conceive a possible time in the future I might return to the same place and be directing my conscious thoughts to the time past when I was at that place contemplating of returning in the future. And when that future manifests to a 'now' moment becomes like a type of handshake or up-link with the self that is detached from the flow of time and all the forces that are pulling at us at all the various stages in life. This I feel might be similar to your comment about finding inner self quickly or building that muscle that reduces affects of the life-distractions switch that's sometimes flipped. The beauty of it being that it's an anticipated and familiar connection of the self but always contains or reveals a little something new.

On separate note, I think maybe I have some difficulty finding ways to convey thoughts and feelings on spiritual ideas or matters pertaining to 'higher self' because I really have never discussed or verbalized outside my shell before. I've always had a hesitancy to subscribe to institutional doctrine or let myself be governed by rigid ritual practice and customs, but will most certainly cherry pick from anything and everything as it finds it's place like a jig saw piece in what is as Authentic as can be my own direct experience of experiencing.

Here's a short story from Tales of the Tao which might have common threads within that I may have been trying to express ... or not... it isn't terribly important, either way it is interesting where there is tangibility to the notion we touched on regarding precision and order grounded in truth in pure mathematical concepts that is the shape of everything in reality but contained within is the irrational the paradoxical infinities inside finites that arises out of ... ()? pi. square root of 2. magic number monster things.

Once upon a time, in the Land of the Middle Kingdom, lived a great emperor. This mighty lord lived in a magnificent castle, surrounded by many guards, ladies in-waiting, cooks, artists, philosophers, and doctors. He awoke each day to the soft caresses of one of his many wives, ate his breakfast in a wonderful garden surrounded by the morning song of his many birds, and passed his days in the company of his many admirers and flatterers. But he was not happy.

He felt he was missing out on some essential thing of life. Just what this essential thing was he did not know, but he knew that he did not have it, and this distressed him endlessly. He filled his court with various magicians and philosophers, all of whom tried to tell him that if he would only listen them and them alone he would find this essential and missing ingredient of his life. But he knew that each was only trying to better his own individual situation, and so did not heed their shining and flattering words.

Instead, he winnowed them out, one by one, until there were only two groups left, the Confucians and the Taoists. But he could not decide which of them had the secret and essential thing that he was lacking. The Confucians were a haughty yet wise lot. They did not flatter him in silken phrases like other philosophers had. They told him of the mighty days of old, when the emperor was truly the son of heaven and could in heaven’s name. All he had to do was return to those days and revive the ancient ways of the old rites and rituals and his kingdom would prosper - he would be happy and fulfilled, both as a ruler and a man.

The Taoists, on the other hand, seemed unorganised and motley crew. They never seemed to agree on anything, even among themselves and spent their days performing strange movements like animals in the garden; their nights drinking wine, reciting poetry, and trying to seduce his ladies-in-waiting. But they were said to have great powers over the elements and the secret of eternal life. Of course, when he questioned them about this they only shrugged and said “we have but once precious secret and the one only, my lord”

“well then,” he would say, “What is this precious thing?”

“Ah,” they would counter, “We cannot describe this secret in words, great and powerful Lord, we can only show it to you.”

“Agreed,” said the emperor, and announced a contest between the Confucians and Taoists. Whichever could show him the true secret of their power, he said, would become the supreme teachers of the land.

On the appointed day, the Confucians and Taoists were led to a great chamber deep in the heart of the castle. A great curtain was drawn down the centre of the room, dividing the Taoists from Confucians. Both groups were told that they were to create a painting, a great work of art, on the wall on either side. This would be the final test of their power and knowledge. Whoever impressed the emperor the most would be awarded the prize.

The Confucians smiled and quickly ordered all the colours that were available in the royal storerooms. They immediately went to work designing and painting a magnificent mural. The Taoists, on the other hand, ordered a great deal of wine and few dozen soft cloths, the softest that were available. Then they went to work opening the wine.

Day after day the Confucians labored on their huge and wondrous mural. Day after day the Taoists ordered more wine and simply rubbed the wall with their soft cloths, over and over, while singing old drinking songs at the top of their lungs.

Finally came the day when the emperor would review each work of art and make his decision. First he visited the Confucians’ side of the room, certain that he would be in for a visual treat. He had watched how assiduously the Confucians had applied their layers of colours on the wall and how they stopped often to study the ancient texts and perform slow and stately rituals before taking up their brushes again.

He was not disappointed. The Confucians had created a marvel of colour and form. He saw his whole city laid out before him, with his own castle in the very centre of the city, the golden light of the setting sun glinting off its shapely and graceful roofs. At the edge of the painting he saw his own magnificent form astride his favourite war horse, leading his victorious troops into battle against and already vanquished enemy.

A great river ran across the bottom of the painting with cunning little waves painted all over it and the curly shadows of birds suspended above it. It was truly a wondrous and amazing sight and the emperor was at a loss as to how the Taoists could top it.

Imagine his surprise then when he crossed over to the other side of the room to view the Taoists’ work only to find a completely blank wall and a lot of slightly tipsy Taoists doing their strange cloud-like movements. True, the wall was very shiny and smooth after numerous applications with the soft cloths but there was nothing there, no paintings of his magnificence, no golden palace, no wondrous river. “What is this,” he thundered, “you did not even try to paint a picture. Is this the way you curry my favour?”

“Oh but we have done our best!” cried the Taoists indignantly, and a little rudely.

“But there is nothing there, “ said the emperor, “Is this truly how you view me? Is this your precious secret?”

“Wait one moment please,” said the oldest and tipsiest of the Taoists, his long beard still damp with wine. “Please draw aside the curtain between our walls and you will truly see our work”

So shaking his head in wonder, the emperor had the curtain drawn, revealing the dazzling painting of the Confucians. The emperor stood before it once again, marvelling at its wonder (and how they seemed to get his noble brow just so). Then, his mind already made up as to who was the the winner this day, he turned once again to the Taoists’ blank wall, only to find there, not a blank wall after all but the reflection of the painting on the opposite wall. Only this time, instead of a flat and static picture, he saw reflected the unbelievably smooth and shiny wall, a moving picture.

Somehow, because of the play of light on the shiny surface there, it seemed as though the painting had come alive. There was the palace and the town again, only he thought he could detect movement behind its windows. The river itself moved, the waves lapping against each other and the birds pirouetting overhead. And lastly, he could see himself there, astride his great stallion, whose very nostrils seemed to quiver in the air while his own beard fluttered in the breeze and his lips seem to move with own shouted ordered to his troops.

He was amazed. He was astounded. he turned to the tipsy Taoists and asked them with humility and wonder in his voice just how they had managed this miracle. The Taoists seemed to hang their heads just a little and answered simply.

“It is actually in not doing that we achieved this wondrous thing, Sire all we did was create the space for the painting to happen and it painted itself.”

“Is this then your precious secret?” asked the great lord.

“Yes,” answered the Taoists, “it is indeed.”

“We call it Wu Wei”
https://www.alanranger.com/blogs/the-way-of-wu-wei

TraineeHuman

15th October 2021, 05:43

Firstly, Ankle Biter, you began by describing a certain type of ability you have to trace back and recall details
of your past visits to a given location. Well, the unleashing, the acquisition within oneself of certain inner
abilities or powers, is one of the things that normally occur when one activates the Higher Self. I haven't talked
about these specifically in this thread before.

Actually, first there comes the activation of the inner self (before there can be the activation of the Higher
Self). The inner self, as Barry Long called it, is "the inner body". This is made of energy within oneself and it
needs to be awoken, I think in ways somewhat similar to aspects of how some fundamentalist Christians conceive
being "born again" to be (though I may be wrong about that). Here the inner self fully (and I think permanently)
takes over the electro-magneto-chemical soft-metal robot known as your (physical) body and your surface
consciousness or your surface perceptions.

Secondly, there comes the activation of the Higher Self. This involves a kind of splitting between the overall
body-consciousness on the one hand, and a withdrawal from that and into a permanent state of a certain degree of
presence or mindfulness that centers itself within the spine and brain and their energy fields. The activation of
the Higher Self is always accompanied by an unleashing of certain abilities or powers, and more and more
unleashings as time goes on. So, I deduce that you have probably activated your Higher Self already, since you have
the ability you mentioned, which you can even use as a
grounding method when I'd claim it's not intrinsically a grounding method but big points to you that you have the ability
to make that into a grounding ability!

The Taoists in the story you've quoted were also clearly demonstrating a special ability which they no doubt could
only have if they had activated their own Higher Selves.

Ankle Biter

15th October 2021, 06:28

Thanks TH I think maybe, and seemingly incorrectly, I'm interchanging higher self and inner self... I say that because I don't know, or rather wasn't aware of a distinction in the labels themselves but can see a difference now in your describing of the two. Maybe you, caught on a bit I might be confusing them and offered some insight in your post which is good! And if so I Appreciate that.

In light of that I'm still not sure which to apply in regards to the grounding when visiting past frequented places I mentioned earlier. I think maybe not quite higher self but who knows?.. at least not me right now..haha. I'll look up some of what Barry Long has to say (first I'm hearing this name) and see if I can pick up some more puzzle pieces find a place for them. It certainly sounds like topic of discussion I'd be keen to join in with on this thread should you choose to touch on that another time.

TraineeHuman

15th October 2021, 08:50

Barry isn't alive any more, but the Barry Long Foundation still exists, and may still have an online bulletin and access to some of Barry's books. Eckhart Tolle was a student of his, as was I.

Ankle Biter

15th October 2021, 08:53

Ah ok, thanks. Echart Tolle I have read a bit way back. Looking forward to learning more.
:)

TraineeHuman

15th October 2021, 09:21

Don't worry about labels. The Kingdom of Heaven is within, so just simply go within, into whatever lies deeper in you. Let your intuition and your aware looking and unseen guardians guide you, and simply go with the flow. (Pardon the cliche.)

Later on you can put labels on if you like, but the experience always comes first.

TraineeHuman

15th October 2021, 23:47

You can read some of Barry Long's writings (or Tolle's version of them), but in the end it's mostly based on things
that Krishnamurti said, with a touch of influence from Gurdjieff's teachings and a tiny bit from Ramana Maharishi.

Here in Australia, where Barry grew up, from early in the twentieth century the Theosophical Society, and also
some groups of private individuals, for many years would (and still do) play tapes or videos of Krishnamurti's talks.
Some consider they know for certain he was undeniably a reincarnation of the Gautama Buddha and also of another
famous ancient Buddha from earlier times than that (I forget the name). (As I have a postgraduate degree in philosophy,
I can confirm that his metaphysical position on dozens of different questions was very precisely the same as that of the
Gautama Buddha had been, even though Krishnamurti never read or studied Buddhism at all. Various wannabes in more recent times
have claimed they were such a reincarnation also, but I believe they fall far short of passing this test.) For much of the twentieth
century, almost no-one really understood what Krishnamurti was saying, but Barry Long was one of the rare few who totally did.
It's all about freedom from unhappiness, ultimately, and about unleashing ready access to bliss, or at the very least
OKness, at all times. The trouble was (and is) that Krishnamurti would talk at a high level of awareness that practically
all of his audience couldn't sustain, or even grasp for very long, and so they would unwittingly keep knocking themselves
(their awareness) partially unconscious while trying to listen. Even if their body didn't slump or go asleep, certainly their
focus would go in and out of haziness and so there would be only partial concentration. Not that they would necessarily
be conscious at all that that was going on.

Barry was one of a small number of individuals who didn't unwittingly make his awareness go semi-conscious. Maybe
Osho was another example, because as far as I know, most of his teachings were ultimately based on Krishnamurti's
teaching too, though sometimes also over-influenced by Freud (some of whose teachings, it is well-known, have in the 70s and 80s
been proved over and over again to be inferior (in comparison to other approaches) when applied to psychotherapy or counselling).

Ankle Biter

16th October 2021, 00:48

It is a very curious aspect regarding awareness, for most I'm guessing, how it mimics a wave pattern sometimes. One moment it's high then we're down. With the few exceptions you mentioned.

I'm not sure if it is the same 'energy' but it's reminding me of some interviews I saw with Gary Zukav on the t.v. in the past. His vibe prompted me to read a few of his earlier books in which I found the same pattern in the words. Most interesting was the title "Dancing Wu Li Masters", which was bringing together ideas of spiritual life and development (from Eastern perspective) together with the world of subatomic physics of all things... but now if you see some modern science talks & lectures about the nature of subatomic particles, well academia is almost reaching similar bridges from the other direction.

Mashika

16th October 2021, 02:40

I would like to add something more about "balance" in what Japanese and Buddhist terms mean, if you don't mind :)

There may be a misconception for some people about that concept, when comparing it with the western concept of "balance". In the Japanese version of it, something may be balanced, if it's imperfect, because it means "it's following the natural way" Which means it's not following a specific order, it's random, but natural, so it's 'balanced with nature' which is just like that. If there is order, then there are rules. Balance, in the way that every fits exactly one purpose or exists at some place and for some reason, it's 'order', where there is order there is no room for change, only room for following guidelines and conforming to the 'order' that keeps the balance in place

I don't even know still if i truly make sense, it's hard to explain for me, these concepts, i lack the language skills to be very clear about it, but i think it kinds of gives a basic explanation of it

Also see this for example, this is a Japanese room
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/attachment.php?attachmentid=47629&d=1634351619

See how some things are 'off', like TV is not centered, other things in the room are also not centered around the room, it's 'balanced' in a 'nature' way, like a rock on the river, or a plant growing out some random place there in the field

And this one, this is not an "empty room" no. This room is filled with "nothing"
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/attachment.php?attachmentid=47628&d=1634351619

This is related to the "higher self" very much, because of this: What is your soul filled with? Where are your emotions, are they "centered"? Is your soul full, or empty? Full of what? Emotions? Is your higher self, aware of you, as much as you are aware of it? How do you 'feel' about it, and how does it feel about you? There is no balance there, unless you accept that being 'balanced' means there is randomness and things are just what they are. See what i mean?

If you specifically try to "understand" Wabi sabi, instead of just "live it" then you 'know about the concept' but you are 'not' part of it, or it has changed you in any way for the better or worse, you just 'know about it', just like you know how to open a bottle, or how to turn on the lights on a room or open the door

Wabi sabi and Satori are a bit hard to merge with other concepts born in the west, you have to drop some of your previous understandings to get the 'real' meaning of those concepts. I wish i could be better at explaining these things :(

TraineeHuman

16th October 2021, 04:13

Mashika

16th October 2021, 04:50

I agree, Mashika. Words are merely a kind of matrix. They're a kind of net, that many things slip right through without getting caught in it. We live in a fluid universe. We're not made of stone. And some words are fictional, if you take them literally. For instance, there is no such thing as "nothing".

We only ever learn the meaning of words through an act of pointing that initially comes with the word. But the first time we hear a new word when we're young children, we don't know if the new word might mean, say, the leg, or the foot, or the shin, or the step, or the underlying support, or whatever. And even though eventually we learn that what was meant by a particular sound was, say, the foot, the ambiguity is still there. Because the rest of life, beyond language, remains a world of pointing, where we keep having to ask ourselves: "What, exactly, is this that life or someone is pointing us to right now?" We don't really know the meaning, except that we need to watch for the next time something or someone seems to be pointing in the same way. Then, maybe, we start to work out what the meaning was supposed to be. And that's just whatever they wanted the pointing to refer to at those times. (I.e., the meaning of the word or that pointing is just the use of it, and vice versa.)

Actually, I would claim that all this is one more example of how formlessness subtly interpenetrates everything.

I remember a lesson, that said this

If a square was called a circle by everyone around you, since you were born, then you will also call it a circle, and when you were to watch the round circle, instead of a square, and people would tell you about your mistake, you will think they are crazy or uneducated... 'This round thing is a square, of course! and that thing with 4 edges is a circle!' would go through your mind, in some way. And who is right and who is wrong?

A circle is only a circle if you named it that. No one is crazy, or uneducated in that conversation. It's all just one of many aspects of "Mu"

ETA:

For small kids, there is a small but funny test that goes like this

"Here there are lots of pieces of wood, all have a form, match them with the rest so they are uniform"

And the real expectation is that you will figure out they can't be matched, because the pieces are incompatible, their are build so like that :)

So the answer is, to randomly put them up together and then say "this is how they are right now" or something similar must be said. And then they teacher knows if you are "in" or not :) Teacher may ask: "and how were they before, what changed? Then, if you were me, you would say "the same but i am watching them a different way now"

I probably should not have shared this, it's supposed to be 'not sharable' but oh well :)

I'm not sure if it's clear for new readers here if what i'm saying truly relates to the topic, but it does, honestly! It just requires a bit of 'work' to get around the lack of skills i have in expressing myself. It's worthy, trust me please :flower::heart:

TraineeHuman, Ankle Biter, I think you'll know :flower:

TraineeHuman

19th October 2021, 21:43

Mashika, I believe you misinterpreted what I meant by my comment that during meditation I prefer to "dwell in
emptiness" much of the time, so let me expand a little on that. It's a dynamic state, and it's not totally passive
either. During meditation I do whenever possible bring in as many of the qualities and features of the formless
worlds and even the divine worlds as possible. Two of my recent posts here have even been about the formless
worlds. As that name obviously even suggests, they are profoundly "empty" in certain senses. But they are "empty"
because, paradoxically, they are so brimmingly full, of intensely pleasurable and profound things, and let's not
ignore all the gigantic playful fun that's there either. So, let me say a little more about the fullness.

Also, people sometimes refer to the divine worlds as "Source". Well, that's because the divine and then the
formless worlds really are the ultimate source or beginning, of something that plays in those profound levels of
reality and only then can it even exist and become a feeling or an idea or whatever. Source is in some ways much
more "hands on" than some would imagine it to be, and it does love to have fun, and to break all existing
conventions and expectations. And it's never boring, or "stuck" even though from another point of view it's
profoundly "empty". More "empty" than anything/anywhere else. People need to greatly broaden how "wide" they
think the reach of Source to be. True "spirituality" encompasses much more "common" and even "vulgar" territory
than many people seem to imagine. Source, and indeed formlessness and the infinite, is continually working to
"descend" or shine into the lowest reaches of existence, and to continually pierce all veils more and more. It's a
continual process of filling us all with ever a little more and more of the divine. As I tried to explain a little
early in this thread, Spirit is deeply involved with matter (and time). It's right here, right now, although we let
the veil distort our perception of it. To me, "emptiness" is often to do with pulling away that veil, and hence
it's to do with bringing as much of bliss as we can into the tough situations of ordinary life.

Mashika

24th October 2021, 11:19

TraineeHuman

25th October 2021, 05:13

Hi Mashika,
I do appreciate that some of the things you've said can, among other things, be relevant to understanding formlessness better. For instance, one thing I think, in my mind, you were doing was the equivalent of saying that pointing is an activity that we can do, while n this world, that can link us to something formless. Similarly, although words always have a form, their meaning, or part of their meaning, can be something formless.

However, in this thread I've tried to avoid getting too philosophical as far as I could manage. That's because my understanding is that authentic spirituality is primarily a matter of experience, and not theory. And of what's (seemingly) 100% certain experience at that -- rather like the way we're certain of the truth of whatever we directly see or hear, or feel through touch, and so on, for all the physical senses.

On the other hand, in a discussion Forum the emphasis most of the time is on the use of critical analysis or conceptual analysis, and of offering plausible hypotheses, in order to hopefully get closer to uncovering the underlying real truth. Believe it or not, in this thread I haven't been centrally interested in that. However, because I have degrees in philosophy and psychology and social work (which includes sociology), some people do (and in the past, often did) misinterpret what I was trying to say as an expression of my opinion (instead of as my experience), couched in what seems like maybe very theory-laden language. But normally it's simply my description of my direct experience, or of what I deduce based on others'.

I suspect this intrinsic and necessary difference in emphasis is why the Spirituality heading is placed right near the bottom of the index of Forum topics.

So, I actually have a house rule with myself to try to avoid expressing my opinion as distinct from my direct experience and the latter's implications. And although my descriptions will inevitably be coloured somewhat by my opinions, I try to avoid centrally focusing on them. But that also applies to others' opinions or conclusions. For me, what's important is the experience that unleashed the individual's wonderful insight.

Getting the experience, though, often takes much work and dedication and a long time and an extremely enthusiastic attitude. There are of course no shortcuts to any of those. Looking back, I didn't realize so few would be able to go out of body easily in a controlled way, or even just be ready to write down many of their dreams over a long period. (I never promised them a rose garden -- well, not till after years of constant, seriously dedicated hard work. And even then, it's a matter of bring your own rose garden -- to all the horrible situations, but they'll no longer get you down.

TraineeHuman

17th December 2021, 22:55

In my understanding, one basic principle everyone ideally should follow in life is: first we always need to simply and unbiassedly look, to see what's actually there (not just physically, but also within us and within others and society and the environment and so on). You just look. First you look, without thinking, without any frontloading (if you possibly can). I would describe this as a good example of a practical philosophical principle. And also as one of the most important of all philosophical principles. And, may I point out, surely it's philosophy-in-action, not philosophy-in-discussion. (And yes, by the way, this also happens to be a major component of"mindfulness" when that is carried out fully and properly -- which, yes, one of course certainly can't learn to master properly in one day.)

My understanding is that there are many philosophical principles which are at the same time practical principles like this one, regarding how you can and should live life optimally.

Real (spiritually authentic) knowledge doesn't come via thinking, but it comes out of what you are, or what you've become. It's also the essence of (spiritual) philosophy. Despite public impressions to the contrary, philosophy (and spiritual philosophy especially) is centrally about knowing, and not about thinking. Where the thinking comes in for us personally is that we often need to identify for ourselves, or discuss, what it is we've realized.

To quote Sri Aurobindo: "There is nothing mind can do that cannot be better done in the mind's immobility and thought-free stillness. When mind is still, then truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the silence."

Then also, of course, as you've heard before, what are you to make of certain rather strange people (myself included) who have had, or continue to have, yes, thought-free stillness experiences of seeing (simply and purely looking at, plus in some way entering and even living in) the deeper underlying reality that holds everything in our universe together. They may subsequently describe that in terms like maybe, for instance, the following:

"Existence-Consciousness-Bliss is the ultimate (and the highest level within) the higher self (or "highest self") of us all. It is “One” but also it is in many, and it is conscious in (and somehow inside) everything. On the other hand, it is transcendent as well as (in some major respects) incommunicable, too. It is space itself and simultaneously all that is in space. It is simultaneously subject as well as object. It is cosmic as well as supracosmic." And so on and on. Well, that is what they actually experienced and directly saw to be the truth, in at least some moment of authentic experience, those certain strange people, who apparently want to bend, or extend, language and meaning quite beyond their "normal" limits.

The things they say or point to are important because in such profound or blissful spiritual experiences, the experience in itself brings the knowing of a certain sort of fuller and more complete, and therefore true, picture of reality. Also of the ultimate underlying reality too. And that all requires some special terms if we want to describe it let alone to gain insights from this into what the mastery of life might involve. These terms, in turn, we discover, are loaded with often surprising implications, such as implications about what the true nature of reality is, and the true nature of all our perception, and about what things we may be doing wrong in our day-to-day behaviour, and on and on. The question is how to "unpack", and make practical, the above extraordinary terms in ways to make what they are pointing at accessible to our everyday understanding, and even to our own
potential experience, -- perhaps in our own future at least. There are also of course questions about what kind of things do we need to develop and then apply in our own lives so that we also may learn how to access more and more bliss and inner liberation while we live in this challenging and often frustrating and treacherous world.

Those huge questions, and implications, are, I suggest, all mostly philosophical in nature, and at the same time fairly often psychological as well. But it's well-known (to academics who teach philosophy) that many, if not most, undergraduates aren't ready to intellectually understand philosophy. So, I suggest it's a mistake to assume that you necessarily have the ability to master it or truly understand it or appreciate it fully in a short time. But at least, right now, through entering into these considerations, we've (hopefully) started doing the beginnings of some practical philosophy!

This overall scenario (the eight paragraphs above) was part of the kind of context I'd actually had in mind as the intended background for the "Comparative philosophy" thread I recently started. "Philosophy", in its root meaning, refers to the love of wisdom. That is something none of us can afford to do without, nor to ever take our foot off its pedal, particularly if we're kind to ourselves. Every spiritual tradition tells you you need to do this. In the book of Proverbs, for instance, it says: "My son, love and cherish wisdom above all things." Personally I've lived that, and I still do. But the trouble is, it seems you don't "get" the importance of keeping on doing that passionately and proactively and for always -- (as far as you can) always loving wisdom above all things -- until you've done it long enough and totally enough to enjoy the blissful rewards, and the spin-off insights and inner changes, that doing that alone will already deliver to you. The truth, as I understand it, is, practical, applied spiritual philosophy occupies much of the user manual for how to live rightly (or how to make your life righter more and more).

There are also, further, other philosophical, and sometimes psychological, issues around what we should look at as most central for us to concentrate on, particularly in our daily life. Above all things. But, let's narrow down, for now, just to exploring one individual's -- Krishnamurti's -- philosophy a little. For Krishnamurti, one of the most central issues was a total transformation of the individual self as a cure (ideally the best and ultimate cure) for the conflict and suffering in the world. To achieve this, he suggested his audience, to begin with, needed to do such things as totally think for themselves (hence to question everything), to feel passionately about what's important, and to truly shed the burdens of the past or future (which is a subtle and very advanced ultimate skill and way of knowing that's easier said than done, of course) so that, ultimately, their mind was then free from fear. He also observed that it's necessary to learn to be "intelligent" in the sense of being capable of always dealing with the many issues of life holistically. Easier said than done. Because for this, one of course ideally needs to first become well and fully aware of one‘s own conditioning, motives, and purpose in life -- and that alone takes a lot of intense work over a very long time, if not lifetimes for most. The mind absolutely has to be freed from all its conditioning, and so -- if you can actually do it --, Krishnamurti did his best to explain in detail how we can more generally break free from being slaves to knowledge and "the known". It's not theory or words but it's learning a certain type of knowing, of, paradoxically, how to become free of "the known" in certain ways. Absolutely essential for us all, yet very few actually live that.

Like the Gestalt psychologists (and like me, and Zen, and Taoism in its ancient form,and just like any of those other strange people who have seen the universality of the deeper underlying reality), Krishnamurti believed in the totality of perception. Generally, as I've described earlier in this thread, we very much see things in fragments. Both society and our education teaches us this. We function as a nationalist, as an individualist, as Catholics, as Hindus, as Muslims, as Germans, Russians, French etc. In these respects and many others, we certainly even fail to see humankind (or our country) as one whole. Also, the ordinary thinking mind is incapable of true holism, but the education system teaches us to somehow blindly believe it is altogether thus capable.

For Krishnamurti, the mind absolutely had to be freed from any fragmentation, and therefore, for example, from following any particular ideology. Tough! Also from holding any images of our close friends and family members and so on (beyond practical matters), because that in itself already prevents the very possibility of authentic relationship!

And so on. That's just part of what's in Krishnamurti's philosophy, by the way. Notice that at the end it's all practical, once you can understand it and hold it in your awareness (which few seem to be able to do, most unfortunately). But notice it also demands various tough standards of personal awareness and inner discipline and realization and work on oneself. Please don't assume that these can be developed in, say. just one year of intense hard work. But that's how a philosophy works when its practical implications for our ordinary daily life get implemented. The ordinary working people in the ancient Asian cultures used to fully understand this, once. And many practically applied it then. Humankind has lost much of that gentle, tender beauty that often practically used to be a part of being Asian. But we need everyone to somehow recover the skill of moving beyond a fragmented
mindset and style of behaviour.

Another major point that Krishnamurti emphasized is as follows. This will probably sound quite "philosophical" in some abstract sense, but it's the reality -- which you can see if your eyes are truly opened. Whenever we look at anything, any situation, the truth is this. The observer (meaning what you may think of as "you") actually is identical to the observed. (That's because the observer and the observed are tied at the hip, so to speak, by the (underlying) relationship, without which observation isn't possible.) (Think: you are the Universe, and "the observed" is just the unique "angle" the Universe of you is taking on right now.) And in reality there is simply no space, no separation, between "the observer" and "the observed", ever. Because as I've tried to explain at some length early in this thread, you are in fact the entire universe, but seen from a certain unique angle (so to speak). That may have sounded abstract or idealized or whatever back then, so let's look briefly at some of what it means to make it practical.

So, then, for example, what you ultimately and actually are in your work situation is that you are the whole thing, but limiting yourself (probably) to just one unique angle of looking at the whole thing. So, if you complain about how uninteresting or demeaning or ridiculous the work you do is, in absolute reality what you are really
complaining about is part of yourself. The trouble is, most Westerners have learned to become so deeply alienated from who/what they really are, they have little or no perception of this, no willingness to consider that such an outrageous consideration might actually be the deepest and fullest truth. You may say that the management defined the horrid tasks you have to do. You ignore, though, that you have actually allowed the whole situation to happen -- which is a powerful act, even though it's passive. You have passively failed to use your power to create anything else, and you've said nothing while you empowered the horribleness of the work tasks or whatever to be deprived of the constructive criticisms and improvements which you could have created instead (but you withheld because you needed the money). We like to think that we are corpses and brains and hearts and nerves kind of trapped within the boundaries of our skins, but that's just an irresponsible and false fantasy. While at our workplace, we actually are the whole company, for better or worse. The context of everything that's in that company becomes the context in which our spirit is incarnated, and therefore of ourselves, while we are there.

Which means that all the flaws and injustices and so on are your own responsibility as much as the management's. If you work in such an environment, try spending a week taking responsibility personally for every single thing that goes wrong there. I believe that would open your eyes to what I'm trying to say here, and to (one example of) what Krishnamurti, speaking the truth, meant by saying: "The observer is [literally the same as] the observed".

Ernie Nemeth

18th December 2021, 17:01

TraineeHuman

19th December 2021, 01:10

Are the Divine worlds the Void? Roughly speaking, yes, indeed. But it's such an ultimate-reality yet also multifaceted issue, ordinary language also gets stretched way beyond its limits here. The Divine Worlds are empty of all objects, but on the other hand they interconnect all things.

In my teens I used to wonder what in the world the Buddhist Void was exactly, and why did it seem so gigantically important to experienced Buddhist meditators? Also, over half the world's religions are Buddhism in some form, so what did some of their sages etc know? And why, I would wonder, did their statements about the Buddhist Void sound so confusing and in certain ways so vague? In my teens through to my late twenties, I used to apparently physically (or pseudo-physically) see some levels of other worlds (other levels, such as the astral levels and so on) superimposed onto the physical. This made various things like physical buildings become partly or mostly transparent (x-ray vision, I guess), plus higher-level
worlds would become partly visible to me, as if they had been partially physicalized, somehow, in some sense. There were various levels of higher worlds that seemed to become physicalized for view in this way, but what would grab my attention the most would be a broad stretch of intense "energy" that I could see crossing the length of my field of view that seemed certainly formless, and also to my eyes darker than the other levels. It grabbed the attention, though, because the act of looking at it continually brought extreme pleasure, bliss, to me, and other wonderful things to do with experiencing profundity. As far as I could tell I thought it was the Divine Levels allowing me to experience them (or inter-experience them) to some degree, and also in a way physically showing me how they in a sense ruled over everything that happened at all lower levels of reality. And I would think, ah hah, this must be the Buddhist Void that all the fuss was about.

Another thing which I would associate with "voidness" at a psychological level is learning how to firmly hold the light and peace within you regardless of what happens around you, and regardless of what someone thinks of you. This is a skill that takes a very long time to develop fully, of course. Also connected to this, as far as I'm concerned, is the inner being inside us of which we're not usually conscious because of our being caught in superficiality. One can become aware of the inner being and live in it and get detached from the neurotic hold of outer things, dealing with them from an inner consciousness (felt as separate from the outer consciousness) according to an inner truth of the soul and spirit and no longer according to the demands of the outer Nature.

Well, in reply to your post, Ernie, so far I haven't really gotten further than some of my comments about voidness or the Void.

TraineeHuman

25th January 2022, 22:47

Some comments and reflections about the consciousness of our body's cells.

Each cell in the human body has consciousness. The consciousness of each cell joins up with that of all the other cells to a certain degree. It must, to maintain the body in good condition. But "normally", individuals don't develop that united cellular consciousness very much. We do develop it a little, for example through learning to play certain sports skilfully, and through learning various manual skills, such as driving a car etc etc, and through learning to collaborate with our body in natural ways and in developing and working on our health naturally. But we don't seem to develop an awareness of a mind-of-all-the-cells that can (and ideally should) replace the idiotic and robotic mental jabberings and random thoughts that the brain-mind is continually inflicting on the body, which has to bear them like an (apparently) helpless victim. This would be, surely, the most profound and "far out" kind of rebirth we could have. After all, we certainly don't "normally" get to carry a direct taste of the Infinite (which does certainly exist, at the Divine levels of reality) right at the bodily level.

But at least one spiritual tradition, known as Tantra, does claim it's possible, and very desirable, for "the mind of the cells" to emerge and actually replace the garbage-filled, chaotic, ordinary mind that has unfortunately been running the brain. If this cellular consciousness emerges, then, as I say, the body does in a certain way come into direct access to the Infinite -- to the formless and even the Divine worlds. Traditionally, in traditions other than Tantra, it's usually been assumed that any experience of those highest levels of reality can only be tasted by the body after first being passed down into the mental levels (and the mental body) and thence to the emotional body and thence the physical body, but not first-hand. This in spite of the fact that the Infinite is always trying to present itself directly to the embodied soul via the experience of Nature. The Infinite keeps trying to get through to the soul via an infinite variety of ways, actually. It's not enough for the Infinite to sublimely rest in limitlessness and ultimately supreme power and supposedly perfect equilibrium.

To completely transform the thinking mind with such a "takeover" by the united consciousness of your cells is, I believe, a quite advanced form even of "enlightenment". (By the way, I believe that the word "enlightenment" is an Old English word, referring to lightening one's load (of suffering), i.e., making it less heavy.) But I also believe and claim to know that partial forms of such a "takeover" are possible. It's also the antithesis of domination by any AI. Traditionally, mystics have been strongly drawn to spending time in Nature, and no doubt not just because of the healing properties of sunlight (provided one doesn't also get sunburn).

Also, my experience is that whenever "silence" seems to take over the mind and that's experienced as something beautiful, that is actually the united cellular consciousness temporarily "switching off" the idiotic ordinary mind.

TraineeHuman

28th January 2022, 00:47

One motivation behind my previous post was that I am attempting to find at least some partial possible justification for the belief that the number of physical strands of DNA that human beings have determines which dimension they (or at least their consciousness) is in. That claim also asserts that, for instance, for a human's consciousness to be fourth-dimensional even while they are in a physical body, that body merely has to have triple-stranded DNA, supposedly.

The problem for me is that DNA per se is 100% physical, i.e. it's 3D. So, how does adding an extra strand of physical DNA (or an extra ten, or twenty-two) supposedly produce dramatic results that go far beyond anything physical? I think that must surely be the ultimate alchemical dream on steroids! OK, I appreciate that each set of strands of DNA gets ensouled (and hence in that sense at least attached (NOT physically) to something -- the soul -- that is six-dimensional) provided, of course, that an already existing soul (from the sixth dimension, or higher) does choose to incarnate an extension from itself into the physical world. At least, the strand itself still remains physical but the soul that wants to incarnate remains in a higher place the whole time but also now retains a
major connection to the physical world. (Note, also, that it seems likely that at least some AI units (and maybe all of them) would quite naturally probably get ensouled in a somewhat similar way.)

I don't find it a problem at all to say that prior to the Annunaki interference, the original human(oid)s had 12 (or 22, to quote Alex Collier) strands of DNA, and that each was graciously contributed by a different ET civilization. Nor that, however many years ago (300,000 or 65,000 years or whatever) the Annunaki genetically downgraded the human physical body to 2 strands of DNA, in the interests of tyrannizing the i physical 3D world. No doubt this rendered the physical body less capable -- i.e., at a physical level. But what about the soul, or, indeed, any part of "you" that's from an emotional or intellectual or soul or higher "mind" or divine level? I don't see any evidence of such a downgrading. It didn't stop, say, Steven Hawking, to give just one example. And without any evidence, we merely
have an unproved dogma regarding very mysterious and unexplained and (as far as I can tell) inexplicable super-"alchemical" properties of multiple strands of (physical) DNA supposedly arising simply out of their physical interweaving.

That dogma also seems to me to somewhat reek of the ancient Egyptian religion. Why would anyone assume that everything that particular religion said is the truth? I mean, seriously. That religion teaches, for example, that at the end of every human lifetime "the good side" of their "soul" gets "weighed", as does "the bad side". And if the bad outweighs the good, that individual is immediately destroyed, forever. I expect this is probably where we get the Old Testament verse from that says: "The soul that sinneth, it shall surely die." Talk about fear-mongering! In my
experience, fear-mongering is usually ridden with and based on lies. Also, I personally consider I know that everyone has had past lifetimes where they were destructive or criminals etc, but also other past lives where they did many good and kind and constructive things. So, they didn't get wiped out (including at a soul level) just because they went badly astray in a previous lifetime.

Another part of the story Ms Deane presents is something that sounds to me very racist -- or, more accurately, very species-ist. Somehow, it seems, mega-multistrandedness of one's physical DNA makes one -- hey presto! -- a superior kind of being altogether, not just physically at all. The multiple-stranded beings are supposed to automatically live in some higher dimensions than ours. And yet, somehow they also sometimes enter into our 3D world in a temporary 3D form (which would probably make them feel super-uncomfortable every moment, surely? -- think of yourself getting stuck in the 2D world of Flatland), to make sure they
get their hands on and even monopolize certain kinds of 3D (i.e. physical) DNA. Why? If they're 6D or 7D beings, they must have extraordinarily developed intuitions and sensitivities, probably far beyond what we can accurately imagine. So, why don't they just iingeniously invent the DNA they're coveting? Any seven-dimensional being is going to be super-creative, surely?

By the way, when I speak of 'the fourth dimension", I'm referring to the "astral" dimension made of feelings and by the "fifth" dimension I mean the dimension made of thought, and of pure form. I'm certainly not referring to some world where objects have four physical dimensions, or five physical dimensions. By the way, according to conventional physics and mathematics, what I call our "3D" world
actually contains ten physical dimensions -- according to all mathematicians and physicists. The 3 dimensions of length, breadth and height are dimensions of location, but then there are three further dimensions of motion through each of them, plus three further dimensions of physical spin (or rotation), plus that of physical time. Maybe we should make that 12 physical dimensions, because physical space actually is not nothing, and may also be considered to be what unifies the physical world into one whole.

Going back now to the post before this one, one might speculate that at some point of an intelligent species/race 's development many individuals do get to undergo "cellular enlightenment" as described in the previous post. At that point, I guess the super-intelligence that takes over the consciousness will presumably be at least a little different in accordance with how the cellular DNA is different.

TraineeHuman

1st February 2022, 23:33

What is the real being, the real "soul", that survives physical death? Is this really a "what" or is it, as I would insist, more accurately a "how", much more like a verb (or pure process) than a noun? (And even that is a kind of first approximation to the truth that doesn't go far enough.)
But, wait a minute. If each of us is the Universe already, but from a unique angle in each case, then we're all in certain major ways the same already -- including being timeless. We're huge. Huger than huge. The issue seems, then, to change into questions such as why don't we all know, and are able to feel, that we've already made it? What's stopping us from switching off the tunnel vision -- about ourselves, no less? Why do we listen to the naysayers?

The Vedantists insist that only the Universe is the real doer. Surely, we are all already real and we are actually the ones who did whatever we did. After our physical death, the universe -- which is still us -- arranges a kind of wardrobe change for us, and the universe just goes on. The universe doesn't die. So, if we can truly and deeply accept and feel that we actually are the Universe, then what is death to us? Just a changing of our form, surely. But we, the universe, continue on with the next adventure. Isn't it funny how we all somehow manage to get through somehow after death? Well, that would be funny (strange) if who we were was just our individual soul and that was really just a kind of wisp of smoke on the surface of ultimate reality.

TraineeHuman

6th February 2022, 02:21

I received a PM today from a member who has obviously had some very advanced realisations from his meditation experiences. However, he seemed to me to believe that certain types of realizations require certain corresponding particular types of practices. I didn't fully agree with that. We need to recover the glorious beings that we naturally, and potentially, all are, and then, potentially, I say any type of our being entered and transformed by higher or Divine energies, etc, can be just a natural experience or outcome of what we already are. But that member's email made me reflect about the process by which "the Force" from higher levels can come and enter and transform us. So, here are my thoughts.

Spiritual practices, such as meditation particularly, can lift one beyond the level of one's self as it was beforehand. But that upliftment (from experiencing God, or Light, or immortality, or some form of true freedom) only seems to become permanent to the extent that the uplifting force fully integrates with, or from then on continually interacts with, one's ordinary consciousness. Plus, since we are
still ourselves, it needs to come under the conscious control of, and now be part of, the (now at least slightly uplifted) ordinary consciousness. (So, we get ironically, the illusion that our day-to-day consciousness remains at the exact same level, even though its level has been raised permanently.)

If it doesn't work at the office or during a traffic jam or a major argument at home, etc, it's not a truly transformed consciousness. Unfortunately, though, it seems that only the full emergence of the soul, and a full descent of the "light" and power of the Spirit and the consequent transformation and uplifting of our limited and ever frustrating mental and emotional nature with a super-nature that's higher than ordinary human nature, will really do, ultimately. (And of course, the descent of the spirit doesn't somehow wipe out the body and mind either. It just kind of gives them a glow, and makes them fulfilled. They are the spirit's instrument panel and medium of expression.)

Often one may need to learn how to bring about and nurture this kind of transformation during one's meditation sessions first. What, do you suppose, could be the cause of the sense of peace, purity and calm you experience in your meditation? Surely it's brought about by the union of the lower with the higher consciousness. For a long time at first you may only experience that some of the time during meditation, or it may be buried deep and almost never show up because there's too much chaotic "wild weather" going on at or near the surface.
But, as in ordinary life, persistence will get you anywhere. And hopefully, after a long time some major transformations of your lower nature will come, at least while you're meditating. If they don't, then during your meditation you're not allowing the higher nature to flow in enough.

This kind of descent of the spirit, once it comes, is what makes us then naturally seek to know the greater self, and even the eternal and the Divine. It also makes it necessary for us to seek to understand how we can balance the needs and values and demands of our human life with the eternal values, how to make the latter become "ordinary", as the Zen tradition has never tired of saying we need to do. The Higher Mind, the Force, is always waiting for the opportunity to descend and to "blow your mind" and bring real satisfaction, with deep inner peace and bliss, into your life when it comes. (That doesn't mean it removes your pain and suffering. You have to work a very long time to get rid of those.) But wouldn't it be wonderful to get some direct sense of having an immortal inner nature that knows that all one's stresses are only transitory?

TraineeHuman

7th February 2022, 04:46

Some of the greatest spiritual masters would seem, I think, to have proved, through the facts of what happened in their own lives, that evolution -- a grand and wondersome evolution of a "spiritual" kind -- is something that, ultimately, the entire universe is going through, at many levels and in many ways, and certainly not just a biological evolution -- though certainly including the biological kind as well. Also, it seems to me, it doesn't and surely won't end with homo sapiens, or with roughly equivalent or similar intelligent beings in this or the other physical universes. Surely it will continue on and in into higher and higher levels of consciousness, and vision, and piercing insight, and creativity, and elegance, and ultimately omnipresence and universality.

Consciousness appears in individual form as what we call "mind" (or what the Orientals call "mind and heart"). The truth is, though, that "mind" is mysterious and beyond all scientific explanation. And that's already true even before we get to acknowledge such a thing as "Higher Mind". The trouble for all rationalists here when it comes to understanding mind is, there's something essential in human understanding that isn't possible to simulate by any computational means. This is because, at least sometimes, our mind uses holistic insights that linear thinking will
never be able to fully penetrate.

You will have learned to master holistic thinking/seeing -- which is the core of, or the same as, Higher Mind -- if you quietly but constantly feel or somehow know that oneness really is pervading everything, all the time. If that's true of you, then congratulations. I suggest the achievement of this can be counted as a big evolutionary step just in itself. Quite awesome. And it's more accurately described as a type of "consciousness" rather than "mind", but the trouble is, there actually are even higher forms of consciousness beyond this also.

Moving now to another example of evolution that's not always of the biological kind. Strictly speaking, it seems to be an unsolved problem, a mystery if you like, how what seems to be inert seems to one day "wake up" and stir itself, then grow bigger and bigger. How can a more complex form of life come out of something less complex, less alive? Surely, it seems to me, this can only be occuring because the One Universal Consciousness, the whole, as part of its own process of liberating itself further, somehow -- however indirectly through intermediate agents and
forces, but nevertheless because the One is connected to all things --"breathes the breath" of at least a tiny drop of (some level of) consciousness into it.

After all, evolution is the process by which a being (but always simultaneously also, The One Being and Consciousness) liberates and expresses itself further, and ever further.

While we're on the subject of the Universe (Multiverse), the One Being, let me mention that the next, even more high levels of Mind (Consciousness) involve what are generally called "downloads" or "visions". To be genuine, these need to be coming from a being or force that is permanently at a universal (i.e., Divine) level. In other words, there has to be a communication to you, as an individual consciousness, directly from the entire Universe itself. This can and does happen, to some individuals who've achieved a certain level of mastery of the Higher Mind.
Such individuals usually need to have cleared away a significant level of their baggage. Higher Light needs to be able to shine through without too great an impediment. But it does happen much more often than some may suppose.
In the field of the arts and sciences, the greatest works or theories are invariably the product of genuine "visions" of this kind. Quite often, but certainly not always, visions get picked up by the recipient while they are dreaming or astral or mental traveling. Downloads seem to more often come while the recipient is awake, but it may take a while, if ever, before the recipient manages to consciously and explicitly unpack the details of what has been downloaded to them.

Orph

7th February 2022, 05:44

It's a little hard to read your posts when the sentences keep skipping to a new line as they do in your two previous posts. Not sure why that is happening.

Now, for the topic at hand, there is a "magnificence" within me that, ............., well, ....is quite beyond anything I can put into words. (And I'm quite sure it's within everyone and everything. So, I'm not anything special). I've only barely, barely, barely felt this on a couple of occasions. But, as you know, trying to describe this, or give it attributes, is quite an "exercise in futility" so to speak.

Just from those couple of very very brief instances, to me there is no separation. No higher or lower, or greater or less. ... I am. ... I had a very brief feeling of "I am God". (Forget the religious connotations of the word God). And no, I don't mean that I was a "part" of God. I mean I actually am God. But of course, the person writing this now is only a small part of God. Sounds like a contradiction. But somehow, there is no contradiction.

But again, words can't describe what I felt. And viewing it from an earthly, 3D existence makes it seem like I've drank a few too many bottles of cheap wine. Anyway, .... there is an absolute magnificence within us all, and boy-oh-boy do I want to become more connected to it.

TraineeHuman

7th February 2022, 21:56

Is there really, truly any difference between knowing and consciousness?

Also, is knowing always, in essence, if we look in a very real and aware and complete way, all one whole? Can it really be broken up?

And how is such knowing different from God?

And how is "God" different from truth itself (i.e. from the truest reality)?

By the way, I believe the right answers are: yes, yes, no, probably no difference, and no difference.

Ankle Biter

9th February 2022, 00:27

It's a little hard to read your posts when the sentences keep skipping to a new line as they do in your two previous posts. Not sure why that is happening.

I encountered the same thing when viewing on my desktop pc. If the browser isn't in full screen then the lines of text appear offset vs full-screen mode and layout is normal again. Could there be something similar to how you're viewing the forum that causes this?

TraineeHuman

21st February 2022, 04:39

Early in this thread I talked about how matter and Spirit are ultimately "two ends of the same stick", so to speak. That they are actually, in certain ways, in whatever occurs in our ordinary physical world at least, always inseparably intertwined. And similarly even in much higher dimensions of reality. They prove to be two opposite poles of the one same spectrum, of the one same thing, at some level.

But still, in the areas of our lives that involve physical needs or goals or chores or limitations, often the greatest challenge seems to be this. In various ways, our attention gets wrapped up in matter, and in the many (even daily) activities that occur within its sphere. We get sold down the river. It's almost as if matter was the only reality. Until, that is, any moment when we manage to draw back deeply into our immaterial consciousness. Then, quite dramatically, we suddenly see matter as ultimately just some kind of mask or veil, that gives us some extra baggage to sort out. (E.g.: "It matters, but it's not important, in the wide perspective of the spiritual journey toward greater freedom from unhappiness that is what our life is really about under eternity".)

From that very big-picture "eternity" view, it seems we can't help but feel our existence in pure consciousness as unquestionably having the mark of being a truer face of reality than the world of matter. And as being that which holds everything else together and gives it meaning. It also brings us more satisfying knowledge and insights, and wider horizons, and greater connection with the life-force and with our own inner authority and natural power, and (at least relatively) freedom from unhappiness. That last one seems to be the biggie. Somehow, advancing closer to freedom from suffering is always linked to transcending the trials and the pains inherent in living in the physical world by, ideally, bringing in sufficiently intense bliss or peace from a much higher, more aware and universal, level of awareness, if not of reality, and in a way that's somehow fully under your own control.

In these ways, immaterial consciousness transcends but also breathes the "breath" of consciousness in our lives. Is this outlook or "I" of pure consciousness the fuller truth, or just an illusion? Why, or how, could immaterial consciousness be truer than material consciousness? I believe the answer is: because only in immaterial consciousness do I know what in material consciousness is hidden from me. So, my world and my understanding is much fuller, and more coherent. Plus also, because the immaterial consciousness can take command in every way of all that the mind knows, or causes to happen, in matter.

This is an interesting situation, because the immaterial consciousness is impossible to fully capture or corale. Alan Watts said, to attempt to do that would be like trying to hold onto the slipperiest bar of soap when your eyes are covered over with bubbles, or like trying to touch the tip of your finger with itself. But I disagree with Allan on this one. I claim that proper meditation does progressively increase one's ability to summon and access and even control the bliss or joy and the understanding and love that come from higher immaterial consciousness. And to do so in more and more of the negative or painful situations where you particularly need them, but also more and more in ordinary everyday situations -- not that it doesn't still take a little work and concentration and patience every time.

TraineeHuman

23rd February 2022, 04:53

In the beginning, there was only the void. The waters were not separated from the land. God separated heaven from the earth and the water from the land. Yet God was never born and has always been. Is god the void?

In the beginning there was nothing. Into this nothing, a single point appeared. This point was of infinite pressure and density. This point exploded outward, and matter condensed out of the expanding mass. Yet there was a nothing that supported this expansion into...nothing?

And thus is the dilemma of mankind.

This is the choice: the ineffable or the incomprehensible.

There are many, many, many things that can be said about voidness, or emptiness. These things lie at or in the very heart and foundation of everything else. Far from being totally passive, nothing(ness) in many ways sustains everything else. (That's one reason, incidentally, why in many different ways and contexts it is the Divine.) But it is also the landing strip, so to speak, where what lies beyond us to do can be called upon to descend into our mind in a guise where we can conceive it and trust it, and at least begin to be transformed and uplifted and even freed by it to become something greater than we ever were.

Exhibit one (of many things at the very heart and foundation, I must warn you): peace, or supposedly "perfect" balance, or total openness, or total availability such as pure space always brings (and, note that all four of these are Divine qualities though we take them for granted). Without this, without all of these in fact (as what's existing prior), nothing else can be stable, ever. And therefore it can't be reliably known, ever. The cup needs to first be clean and open and empty.
I should also have mentioned the totality of all possibilities here. Without them, our vision of what we can pour into that cup may be too narrow. But wait, there's a little more. Shouldn't we at least consider some impossibilities here also? After all, what is an impossibility but a possibility that's still at the drawing board stage and needs a little further work and consideration and revision to get it up and running?

And when our mind surrenders fully to stillness, there are many wonderful things (including those in the deeps of our mind) that can only be heard at such a time -- because we've become ready to listen to them.

In my next post I'd like to give some further examples of how what may seem to us to be "nothing" is actually something very different.

TraineeHuman

27th February 2022, 04:31

Let's talk about the soul. Who/ what you are (to the extent that, and in the sense that, you are indeed an individual at all) is the soul, your soul. (By the way, though, also, let's remember you are only truly and fully an individual to the extent that you are also ultimately a unique expression of the whole universe itself! All else is shadows.)

The "normal" situation is that, for most people, the soul doesn't assert its power (apart from during our dreams, when it does "speak up" with little restraint). But this non-assertiveness of the soul's prevails only as long as the soul hasn't succeeded in creating a complete "descended" (or, if you like, "incarnated") version of itself, at the level of what we usually call "my personality" or "my individual identity". (Many spiritual traditions and teachings have a name for when this "descent" happens: "being truly born again", "self-integration", "the return to the marketplace", and so forth. I would like to add that only when this truly occurs can we have full genuine sovereignty, and true empowerment.)

The process of reaching this point involves some kind of very aware retracing and detached re-experiencing of all the diverse fake "selves" that we have invested in in our past in this lifetime (at least), plus also of all the other kinds of fake selves or situations that could be possible. Only then can we find an inner harmonization and be at peace with and not thrown by almost every unpleasant situation and conflict and source of inner pain that life throws at us. You have to take the rubbish out first. (And evil is just an illusion anyway, as is "bad luck". The Divine teaches us through tough lessons.) The soul now at last shows its great inner power and authority as it descends intact into everyday living.

Obviously, the soul can't safely risk this descent without ensuring it at all times retains a ready direct link to the experiencing of the higher reality. Specifically, this link needs to act as a kind of direct doorway to fairly quickly bringing in the feeling of bliss and peace to deeply touch and ignite the core of our being, whenever these are required for countering and smashing the pull of falling into that which has no connection with infinity and eternity; and for slowing down and not getting trapped any more in unhappiness.

I'm afraid that's (a summary of) what it takes to really "have soul." Not that appropriate poetry doesn't help too, but I hope this post at least gives some light and clarity regarding this very difficult concept.

Ernie Nemeth

27th February 2022, 19:06

Yes. The easy part is the awareness of the connection. The hard part is the doing.

The search is one thing. The implementation of that thing when found is shockingly difficult.

Because at some point the realization must be made that, 'I am the ego'. 'I am the thing this authentic self wants rid of'.
It is this shunning that the ego rebels against and therefore the little self, me, mistakenly rebels against it too.

The fear of not only death but total annihilation is the ego's foremost obsession. It is hard to give this sentiment enough room in the process with any grace. The terror of being cancelled forever removes all restraints in the ego's repertoire of defensive tactics, even unto death.

Before true assimilation can begin there is a period of self-realization and self-activation involving specific aspects of the ego as the little self re-integrates because it is so easily confused as to its true affiliation.

It might become concerned with things like:
'Is this part the ego, is this part my authentic self?'; 'Will this part survive, will that part go?'; 'Will I even recognize myself after the ego goes?'; 'Will I still be me?'.
This reductionism can go on a long time and is one of the favorite tactics of the dying ego.

As the transition continues, these are the questions that haunt the acquiescent ego as it capitulates to the new order:
What will I be after I'm reborn? Who will be in charge? What happens to what I was?

If the reverie, melodrama, and nostalgia doesn't reverse the process the ego's final thoughts might well be:
Was I just a pointless dream? Am I truly an illusion?

Will you even remember me...

TraineeHuman

28th February 2022, 01:10

All true, Ernie, except there are other sides to this story too. To exist as a human being / legally valid person in our society, you have to have and enact identities of various kinds at various levels. Even the physical body itself is a big "identity tag" that you're stuck with if you want to continue to ever be recognised as "you". All of these tags could be called, or held onto as, part of "the ego". But my point is, they have to be held onto (and hence perhaps unwittingly nurtured) in some way or degree anyway as long as you're physically alive.

In the afterlife it's a whole different story. The more and the quicker you can shed any and every kind of identifier during the death process, the more freedom from unhappiness you will attain, and the higher will be the "level" of freedom and creativity and joy that you (whoops, another identity tag) will go into or merge with or seem to disappear into (because in pure relationality what gets interrelated is relations and not any subjects or objects; rather like what verbs would be like if they no longer could interconnect nouns). So, even in the afterlife you can't, initially, claim that you've let go of the ego (the self) entirely. (If you'd truly dropped it, you'd have no memory of that.) That's built into the very nature of things. And if "you" can't do it there, then please don't try to tell me you can drop the ego entirely sometimes while you're here in the physical.

The Zen Patriarch Shunryu Suzuki said that the best way to handle a wild stallion is to give it an extremely big paddock to run around and go wild to its heart's content in. But also to make sure that you have strong fences around that paddock. I think the wild stallion he had in mind was the ego. And as far as I see, he was right. Let the ego wear itself out by its own devices. But keep your attention on what's important, and stay with that.

Also, The Divine and the formless worlds are so wonderful to experience that what would you care if entering them or joining them meant a loss of the false parts of "you"? As Jesus supposedly said, who cares if you have to lose an arm if that gets you into Paradise?

TraineeHuman

28th February 2022, 06:58

While we're physically alive, the soul must co-exist with the ego. Perhaps the question then is: in what ways do they always clash, at least at first, and why? Or, how do or can they ultimately best interrelate?

Let's start looking at this with a quote from C.S. Lewis: "True love detaches." I claim, and I'll take it for granted, that what this quote says is altogether true, in certain ways. I think one of the reasons the quote is interesting is that it tells us something that the soul does when it feels true love, and moreover it's something that the ego doesn't ever do as part of its understanding of what "love" means. There's also an insinuation here, at least from me, that the ego isn't the part of us that ever feels much pure genuine love.

However, for decades since before we were born, the pop songs of the day have so often and so repeatedly described for us ways in which love supposedly means being emotionally very attached to the beloved; plus deriving great pleasure from that attachment, or expecting great pleasure once their attachment gets consummated. And always, the ego has a hidden agenda, undeclared in the songs, which ultimately will destroy the beauty and freedom of true love, though we usually won't see this until it's too late.

The lessons we learn in each lifetime about love seem to go through a progression. Even before the pop songs in adolescence, We begin in infancy with witnessing the unconditional pure love our mother gives us. We reflect some of this back to her, yet already we do so mainly because this wonderful attention we're getting is "ours", rather than because we appreciate its pure beauty. In other words, we consider it's part of "me". Pure unabashed egoism.

But in a truly mature marriage relationship, there is a mutual surrender to carrying out the partner's will. Hence the true love leads to detachment even from one's own will, for the sake and the beauty of selflessly giving.

In this way we see an example of how the ego can be gradually and naturally cultivated into a form that gives the greatest satisfaction not only to one's partner but also to oneself. At that point the ego is transformed into soul. However, even if this transformation is achieved, in areas of life outside of the participation in such a marriage the ego may often still in some respects remain hungry for the power of possessing something or someone or some situation for its own selfish supposed glory.

TraineeHuman

2nd March 2022, 05:42

Having said some things about the soul, I'd like to also offer some observations about the spirit.

In reality, in the ultimate, truest reality, everything is interconnected. Even the connections are interconnected. And so on and on. The famous Indian saying says, the ultimate reality is "neti, neti", which means "neither this nor that (nor anything else that you could possibly point to)." Why is it this way? Because the truth is, absolutely everything is interconnected, all in different shades of meaning, or forms of existence, and different contextualities and uses.

So then, it seems, one of the greatest difficulties in understanding things comes from making arbitrary simplifications. For instance, putting spirit on one side and matter on the other. Let's not forget, then, shall we, that when we want to consider what pure spirit is, or pure matter, that anything we say will already be distorted. Why? Because the universe is a seemingly infinite gradation of worlds and states of consciousness, and in this increasingly subtle gradation, where does your "matter" come fully to an end and your "spirit" begin? At what point? I dare you to tell me if you can. And, suppose you want to tell me that ultimately "matter" reduces to space and forms. Then I would insist that the so-called "empty" space (such as within a single quark), having structure or properties or its own force and necessary interrelations, isn't empty, and therefore it's still "matter" (well, mostly "form" but still definitely in some ways "matter").

And however limited your physical body may seem to be in comparison to infinity, nevertheless it ties you to Matter so that you can continually be reminded of, and directly understand by direct contact, that realm of existence. Also, even the world of matter itself is a kind of compact hologram of all the higher levels of reality above the material. So, all of the issues of existence and truth and Life and consciousness have. as a matter of fact, been symbolically concentrated into the limited space of "mere matter". (Compact, all right!) Must imply that your body really is your temple, and your therapy couch.
I also claim to know that for the human consciousness as it is, there are certainly infinitely more invisible (or formless) things than visible (or form-bearing) things. So, sue me. And the beat goes on.

The trickiest thing to describe is spirit. That's because it's eternal, and undestroyable. Apparently makes it pretty hard to find at times, for many. And also awfully hard to get possessive about, because it moves however it wills. But it uses Mind and matter (and the human mind and body) as its expressions, its footprints, its raw material to be divinized somehow, some day. And it's constantly volunteering freely to try and make life in the material world become more and more divine or closer to divine. Miraculously, it never stops working with crude matter. And, just like the Fairy Godmother, it sees extraordinary capacities lying within matter itself always. Because it has the insight to every time see what utterly wonderful things are lying hidden within that matter, hey presto! No need for a magic wand, but just one look from that which instantly sees all possibilities, and hence chooses the most wonderful expression possible of your capacities and innate strengths. It uplifts them and magnifies them and reveals their beauty and wonderfulness to you, even your innate divinity. There's a reason why Cinderella is the most popular story of all. It tells the truth, about how and why you (perhaps secretly to yourself) learn to love yourself. Also about why everywhere you carry inside yourself, as your spirit, the Fairy Godmother herself, even if you may not choose to recognize that this is so.

Innocent Warrior

2nd March 2022, 08:07

So then, it seems, one of the greatest difficulties in understanding things comes from making arbitrary simplifications. For instance, putting spirit on one side and matter on the other. Let's not forget, then, shall we, that when we want to consider what pure spirit is, or pure matter, that anything we say will already be distorted. Why? Because the universe is a seemingly infinite gradation of worlds and states of consciousness, and in this increasingly subtle gradation, where does your "matter" come fully to an end and your "spirit" begin? At what point? I dare you to tell me if you can.

Wow, your ability to articulate what you perceive is impressive, I wish I could do it this well.

I agree BTW, I recently dropped the concept of dimensions, it works well enough on the introductory level but is too crude for how it actually is and just ends up confusing things when processing what I learn.

TraineeHuman

3rd March 2022, 07:27

An important question I believe we should all consider is, what sort of society and civilization would we have if it was based on greatly valuing and emphasizing and harmonizing with spirit in its core essence, including with our own inner spirit, and with our souls? Certainly, I believe any such society would be vastly different. This is a huge topic. It's gigantic, like spirit itself is gigantic without boundaries, and crucial -- regardless of how greatly our society, in most countries at least, today treats the cultivation of the true nature and power of spirit as marginal or makes it half-dead and castrated. (And is it a coincidence that until recently, for some years the officially poorest countries in the world were India and Bangla Desh and Nepal?)

The whole model of human civilization "we" have been operating on is quite defective and necrotically flawed, and certainly self-defeating by its very nature. Surely we know by now that it can't do other than continually create more problems overall than it solves. No wonder that every human civilization in our history has eventually gone into retrogression and decay and impotence and collapse. No wonder, I suggest, that certain AI races of our own creation don't like us.

Our current civilization is based on treating the human individual as made up of four levels: the subconscious (or unconscious), the physical, the emotional, and the intellectual layers. Supposedly, the civilization is driven through satisfaction or governmental or social or commercial control or manipulation of all our individual drives or desires. Plus through the supposed achievement of various forms of "progress", which is always supposedly a good thing but rarely questioned or examined with full disclosure and public scrutiny, and with any adequate precision. If it's "more", it must be good, we are expected to believe.

Fortunately, with the rise of the New Age movement, with whatever flaws it carried, by the nineteen seventies and after we saw a major instinctive and intuitive turning inwards by ultimately almost half of the Baby Boomers. They seemingly were born knowing with total certainty that there must be something better than this, something "more", yes, but not primarily or necessarily more progress or more science or more comfort. First and foremost, they somehow knew, it had to come from within themselves. With all the old structures of ideals and beliefs and traditions collapsing around them that one had to be stuck or stupid not to see was happening fast, they were forced to rely on their own inner knowing. Many also seemed to sense, or notice, for instance, that the romantic myth wasn't true. Even if one did find a semi-"perfect" partner, that didn't somehow magically bring freedom from unhappiness. Many also saw clearly that "the system" was based on economic slavery throughout almost the whole of society, and that the toys and convenience of technological "progress" didn't change the basic picture. And what was the aim of all that progress anyway? More pleasure, hedonism? Did that really compensate for slaving away all day in some role where often one had had to sell one's soul for it? Surely mot.

In this way, the human spirit has acquired a new step in its evolution. It has learnt to turn both inwards and also to out to the external world simultaneously. That soul lesson can hardly be unlearnt. Humans cannot go on indefinitely putting their hope in outward progress, which always leads only to disappointment ultimately. Instead, the group soul of humanity is gradually turning, or will in the near future turn, each of us to the truth of what it means to be really human. That truth can only be found in the soul -- and ultimately also the spirit. It's uncertain at present how humanity will all get there. But the momentum of that inner movement is too strong to ultimately be held back by physical, biological, social, ideological, political, or any other such means.

It can possibly be delayed for a while, but the spirit plays on an infinite-dimensional chess"board". As far as we know, human society has never been based on a knowledge of the soul's true nature, let alone on the realities of the greatness of spirit. Human society has never seriously tried to model itself centrally on conforming to the needs and the fulfilment of the soul. The soul doesn't care for rituals and "religious" customs or institutions, nor for any creeds or dogmas written in concrete. It does care for open questioning of all things, and for a profound openness to creativity and inspiration and (effective) innovation. The soul doesn't submit to mechanization of any kind, other than to have the machine submit to the soul's will and serve the soul.

The spiritual element of life is, in a way, like Schrodinger's Cat or like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle: it can't be captured or formalized, not fully. To even attempt to do so is to kill it. The spirit is interested in freeing people, not in limiting them or oppressing them or boring them to death. Religious fervor has nothing in common with spirit if it is accompanied by the darkest ignorance, or by cruelty or injustice and so on, regardless of what disguise the latter may come in.

TraineeHuman

8th March 2022, 02:30

I was intending to make some comments about now regarding what a truly spirit-based society (or mini-society) might be like. But then I realized that at times I've also argued or asserted that individuality sometimes gets way too much of a bad rap in circles of spiritually-minded people. So, I don't feel able to say meaningful things about what a spiritual society (e.g. throughout a planet) would have to be like without first of all looking at the individual spiritual journey. I'll save my musings about what would be a truly spiritual society for a future post.

As we all know, step one in true spirituality is always to go within. There you encounter, first of all, whatever of course lies just beneath the surface of how you behave and what you experience habitually or through necessities of your work or employment or housemates, or because of your urges or drives or addictions/preferences.

Meanwhile, by contrast, the external person is the outer human personality. As we know, this was formed partly by the force of heredity and partly by the strong impressions and conditioning/imprints and traumas and experiences received from the early environment, and particularly from your family members. These imprints are often further strengthened by habits which are reinforced by society. In this way, society plus childhood family has taken a stronghold on such things as your manners, the way you outwardly behave, the self-concept you implicitly present to others, etc. They've "owned" you throughput your infancy. It's all this that comes out at the front of "yourself' in your everyday interactions with people. You need to go within to be able to see and review all this in great detail also (and not just intellectually, but at an intuitive and inner experiential level beyond words also) -- which very few ever manage to do accurately on their own without help and much feedback.

So, then, to at least begin to penetrate beyond all the above, it's necessary for you, as a first step, to withdraw into being a part-time introvert at the start of the exploration of what lies within you. Though at the same time hopefully, somehow, not being someone who becomes too self-obsessed. Eventually, by some route, through practices such as meditation and learning to be very honest with yourself about yourself (as far as you can), and by identifying and facing some of your baggage generally, fortunately you'll naturally get to the next major step in going within yourself. (Implicit here is that of course there is behind the outer person an inner being, and even an inmost being. That's unlike the usual emphasis in ordinary life, where the stress is on modifying outer behaviour to suit our vested interests. Instead, here the spirit insists first on an inner change, a change of consciousness, that will then hopefully spread authentically from within.)

*** Warning: huge obstacle. At this point now the real difficulty, even for those who have progressed, is often with dealing with your own external persona. Unfortunately, the external person remains almost the same even after you have attained to something in working on yourself. The inner being gets free, but the outer shows by its actions that it still stubbornly follows its fixed nature. And in this physical world the practical reality is, profound transformation by your spirit can succeed only if the external person changes also. But, it turns out, that is the most difficult of all things to achieve. (I imagine the parable of Jesus that you can't put new wine into old wineskins is precisely about the same point.) It's only by a change of the physical nature that this can be done, by a descent of the highest light into this lowest part of Nature. Here is where the real struggle is going on, folks (initially, and for a long time). The internal being, however imperfect still, is by now different from that of the ordinary person, but still the external part of "you" continues to cling to its old ways, manners, and habits. ("I'm from this particular family /peer group /school /country / social class /level of sophistication or intelligence, and this is the particular way people from my group always behave, so I have to do X too.") Many will not seem even to have awakened to the necessity of a radical change of all their behaviour at this point. It's when this is realised and done that your transformation will produce its full results in daily life, but not before. I appreciate this may sound a touch mundane or pettyminded, but the inescapable reality is that "small is beautiful"; and not only that, but actually, any spiritual breakthrough achieves full closure in this world only at the "small is beautiful" stage of its incarnation into the physical. ***

Eventually, though, you'll get to the stage where you also come to realize that you primarily need to seek the Divine (in the background, but still rather consciously) at all times and in all your experiences; or, at least, to seek (i.e., frequently work towards) full-on freedom from unhappiness, just for its own sake. Something greater, something beyond. At this point you've graduated into what used to be traditionally recognized as a genuine (serious) "spiritual practice". Now you're seeking the Divine (or what only the Divine is able to bring) for its own sake (pardon my repetitiveness). Kind of like how genuinely making love is a thing you do for its own sake. (And quite similar in some ways.) Notice the subtle point that such a thing, done authentically, isn't really done for your selfish satisfaction.
And that "for its own sake" just happens to mean for the sake of the Universe as it is. Also, you may not necessarily call it "the Divine", or any name like that.

Suddenly, now (when you get this far), you have an activity which (when you do it) plunges you into a world much deeper than the quite superficial state of consciousness that many around you consider the norm. It's also much more expansive, you'll sooner or later discover, in that here you're not so preoccupied with things that are limited and temporal! (I do appreciate this may sound like the contradiction of what I said about "small is beautiful". What can I say? Both are true. Reality is paradoxical, in this world. The Divine is both transcendent and immanent, which sounds like and is a contradiction but it just is the case. The Divine is both at the same time. And you need both. The physical world is also quite real, in addition to the Divine worlds -- or else what in the world have we been talking about in much of this post so far?) In ordinary life a person's consciousness is separated from his or her own true self and the Divine. That's because he or she is being led by common habits of the mind, life and body, i.e., in continuous Ignorance, right? The mind can be cleared and purified, and its instrument, the intellect, can be used to reason about the Divine, etc. However, when consciousness remains in the mind realm it will never be able to know what the Divine really is. But once it becomes clear to you that you can in fact shift your focus through and quite beyond the mind, to this higher consciousness and to the bliss of just being alive, you'll have access to a level of consciousness that just simply knows no divisions, oppositions or separations, ultimately. But it can still do things. Welcome to your spirit. If you can (pretty much) indefinitely sustain your consciousness at the level of your spirit, that, as I understand it, is (or is the equivalent of) the traditional Indian definition of "enlightenment" In this way you can learn to ascend (to use one of the traditional terms for it, and I believe this is probably very close to what some New Age proponents of Ascension are talking about). But I don't mean you should seek to withdraw from the world, so you can then learn to ascend into even higher realms. You may have heard that ascetics traditionally often aimed to do this, and still do. But ultimately you can explore the upper world, and live in the Realm of the Spirit, and at the same time, you can also bring the Divine down into the material world and into everyday life. And that's a greater achievement than with those ascetics. Most yogis traditionally aimed at leaving behind the body, the emotions and the mind, and to dwell or disappear into the Divine Consciousness. But for the modern Westerner it's easier not only to ascend through the body, emotions and mind into the Divine or consciousness, but then also to bring (some of) this Divine Consciousness down, back into the mind, emotions and finally into the body, in our everyday life. In this way it's possible for us to have a divine life here on Earth.

I need to backtrack a little now to go into at least some further detail about shedding or reforming the outer personality. Many of all these practices need to continue either for the rest of your life or for a very long time. But they can become second nature to you, so that then you do them often effortlessly. A central practice at this point is that you need to begin to get better (and better, and better) at "knowing thyself" in a really major way. The Oracle at Delphi insisted that doing so (in a very honest fashion) was the very core of spiritual growth. She was the Head of the Apollonian religion, which at the time had considerably more followers than the Christian religion. Krishnamurti made the following comment about one facet of why knowing yourself is so crucially important:

"The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosophers or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself. Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self."

Truly knowing yourself has many facets you need to master. Just one of these is coming to intensively understanding, in detail, what all the components of your conditioning were. One of the first and biggest questions to ask here is: what kind of person did your parents intend or even expect you to become? It's absolutely essential that you work out in detail exactly what this was. I know that in my own
case (which I'm just using as one example for your convenience), the aim and expectation of my parents was that I would become a wealthy individual, and through very respectable means. This was particularly important to them because they had come from wealthy families and had had expectations of continued wealth and prestige, but the second world war had made them refugees and they had had to start from scratch in Australia, which to them was a totally foreign and rather vulgar country. The stigma against migrants, even white European ones, was huge in Australia at that time. It was very rare for any immigrant not to feel altogether overwhelming shame just simply for being an immigrant here. My mother also had an extraordinary singing voice and acting talent. At eighteen she had had a major Hollywood feature film written for her to star in. Unfortunately(?), she turned it down, because she would have had to move from Lithuania to Hollywood and live there on her own for at least a year. The role and the song were then given to Marlena Dietrich, and tea movie was Marlena's first, and was responsible for making her famous. Obviously, my mother, and both my parents, had a great deal of motivation to want their children to "prove something" to the world. From the age of four my parents tried to convince me that I wanted to become a physician.

At that time my mother would have known that of the fourteen first cousins of hers who had managed to escape from Lithuania, as the Russian communists were taking it over, to North America, thirteen had become successful physicians there. This was no doubt evidence of a natural aptitude in the family for that line of work. However, even at the ages of four and six I resisted my mother's attempts to
'indoctrinate" me into considering that the medical profession was the right one for me. In retrospect, though, I believe what influenced me more here was that I could see that my mother would have preferred in her heart to have a career as a professional singer and actress. (No doubt I got that she regretted not having accepted the offer from Hollywood.) From modern psychology we know that the most potent form of conditioning is what is known as "social modelling". This just means providing an example that others copy -- like the line of ducklings who learn how to waddle and to swim simply by doing whatever the mother duck does. The point I'm trying to make here is that truly knowing what your conditioning was (as an important part of knowing yourself) can quite often involve uncovering unwitting
conditioning from (one or both of) your parents that undercuts whatever they thought they were conditioning or encouraging you to be.

I need to write a "Part 2" to this, with details of more practices or types of possible practices available, and also details of more phenomena that can occur at certain stages of development. But I'll try to fit that into a future post soon enough.

TraineeHuman

11th March 2022, 03:46

The previous post had taken us to a point (the initial experience of spiritual enlightenment) where, now, it becomes necessary for us to use a radically expanded implicit model of what the self is than hitherto, before we can go further. One of The truths that begin to become clear at that point -- if you're very very honest and you look hard (and logically, or if you simply have a huge direct experience of this) is that the "I" who was the real doer all along throughout your life was in fact the Universe. Admittedly, it was the-Universe-acting-within-and-all-around-your-body-and-social-identity, but the entire Universe nevertheless, though maybe seen through a glass and darkly at this point. Enlightenment (at the level we first experience it) has meant realizing that this was so, not just intellectually (though that too) but consciousness-wise. As it says in the New Testament: "I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me." Just here "Christ" of course means something Divine and universal -- i.e., the whole Universe.

But there are in fact levels of enlightenment. The differences between one level and the next are huge, I'm sorry to say -- and at this stage in its cosmic history, our physical world intrinsically tends to bring in much aberration to dampen the intensity of how fully we may continue to experience the fruits of our enlightenment. Also, the initial level of enlightenment doesn't turn you altogether into a full part of God, so to speak, by any means. But you now have a real and continual sense of the Divine qualities. You're now attuned to them. (Forget about the "God" of the Old Testament and of the Illuminati, who was in fact the Devil himself. He saw human beings as being mere greedy cattle, but by comparison with the Divine, that reflects back as an accurate picture of himself in comparison to the Divine.) The Divine is, among other things: very, very sensitive, very fine, very original (always going "out of the box"), very imaginative (not in the sense of fantasy, but as a tool of real knowing), intrinsically beyond time, place, thought, and emotion, frequently creating multiple points of view without favoring any particular one, and universal and wholistic, and interactive with all things.

Enlightenment does also, however, immediately unlock an awareness of a profound degree of f r e e d o m which has been there in us all along. It brings this awareness because the soul has now finished unlocking enough of your mental, emotional and physical consciousnesses for the higher Light to shine through and dissolve some, though not all, of the mental, emotional, and physical blocks. This also proves, by the way, that a gigantic capability and urge for freedom is a central part of the very essence of being human -- however greatly most of us voluntarily keep blinding ourselves to the reality and presence of that freedom already inside us. Freedom is exhilarating, but I don't believe that freedom of the spirit is addictive. Whatever responsibilities are currently weighing us down, I believe we all should and at any moment can increase our consciousness of how much freedom we potentially have to draw on even in the most confined and challenging situations that life puts us in.

Remember the thrill of feeling the physical freedom of being on a roller coaster or whatever for the first time (I mean, perhaps, the first time you enjoyed it rather than being terrified)? True freedom brings deep joy with it, automatically. But what kind of freedom could ever compare with the great joy of revelling, for the first time, in the felt fact that somehow you are (your core is) the entire universe?

Not only is that freedom wonderful to experience and enjoy for its own sake, but it is synonymous with tapping into and being a channel for great power -- the Divine Power. (But from this point on, you need to be careful what thoughts you allow yourself to have. That power can also occasionally be destructive. If someone tries to attack you, and if you vaguely feel that energy but you give it no significance, it will bounce straight back to them. Figuratively speaking, they tried to hand you a bomb with its fuse lit, but you've simply sensed that it didn't fit with the constructive energies and you've said: "No, thanks" and handed it, complete with the fuse they lit, back to them. Now the "bomb" will go off, without you realizing it or even noticing.)

Next point I'd like to make. In the writings of Advaita Vedantists, one can find many statements such as the following: "When one's consciousness rises up to and lives in the Divine Consciousness, one is still an individual, but all sense of personal self disappears." I don't dispute that selflessness is possible. (The proof of that for me was as follows. Throughout my first four years we lived by a beach in Melbourne that was right on the edge of Melbourne's suburban area. The vegetation around that beach was still largely unspoilt, which had attracted a huge population of all different kinds of nature spirits, in the astral. For me there were two kinds of intelligent beings back then: the nature spirits, and humans. And it was very clear most of those nature spirits really were quite selfless. Much nicer and more fun than human beings, I had thought.) So yes, utter selflessness does really exist, but I dispute that it's necessary -- or probably even possible at first -- for most human beings who've recently achieved enlightenment of their spirit. My experience is that the only way for anyone to become perfect in some small (or large) area or skill is by first managing to be half-perfect, and then to keep working at it and m a y b e perfection at it can then be achieved by the ordinary human who's aiming for it.

The enlightened consciousness will need "food", in the form of meditation and mindfulness, to keep it strong and satisfy its "hunger" for the Divine and also hunger to stay in contact with the deeper things. So then: "before enlightenment you meditate; after enlightenment, you continue to meditate (but now, if you're doing it right, it should more often be a blissful experience)". Also, there is a huge journey the soul now has to take, of extraordinary expansion and ultimately growth into something quite beyond what it formerly was. A rebirth indeed, but often it's better when spiritual rebirths come gradually and you almost don't notice you've had one, despite its profundity of transformation.) By the way, if you're groping in need of a clear definition of what the soul is, the soul is hard to define, but it's present and active whenever you're total in something. The soul is the lowest, but most noticeable, level at which you learn to be truly (overall, not perfectly) wholistic in yourself.

You will already have been practising meditation of some kind (normally) long before experiencing enlightenment of the spirit. But at this stage, the road has a fork in it, and the journey becomes different depending on which of the two varieties of meditation you have favoured: heart-centered, or head-centered. My own preference has been to employ both types, though people usually seem to stay with the one type they are used to here, which is perfectly fine too. The next post will describe some of the journey beyond this fork in the "road".

TraineeHuman

13th March 2022, 03:35

Before continuing with what I'd promised in the last post, I guess I should clarify one or two popular considerations about the word "enlightenment". Unfortunately, there has been a certain tradition in India that "real" enlightenment means going "beyond the beyond" -- beyond all limits and all levels and worlds, and so on. Beyond anything one could imagine, even. I have to point out that, unfortunately, this beautiful-sounding and beautiful-feeling idea is nonsense (even though it does convey something of the flavor of the exhilarating feeling and journey that the spirit and soul undergo). Why? Well, for one thing, because it should be obvious that we can't even talk or communicate about (and hence make any claims at all about) that which is totally unsayable. Not in a coherently meaningful form. If something's fully unsayable, then we can't even point towards it. That's because such pointing would make it partly (vaguely) sayable. Poor us, then. We can only rest in silence -- not even silence a b o u t such an utterly "beyond" state, because even that would be pointing at it (in the sense of having an intention which refers to it and thereby brings it back from being utterly "the beyond").

Also, the full reality is one whole, not two. "Enlightenment" that goes beyond the beyond would create two lots of reality. One is the one we know. The other, supposedly, would be the one that's utterly (and incommunicably) beyond the first.

So, then, for me, "enlightenment" can simply refer to any major significant lightening of your load of suffering of any kind(s). Usually, I mean it to refer to living in an almost constant state of freedom from experiencing (or getting stuck any longer than a moment or so in) unhappiness. And I find much of its manifestation is most usefully found in usually being able to tolerate, to bear (but if necessary, also to appropriately respond to) almost anything, if necessary: toxic behavior of all kinds, lack of stimulation, social exclusion, severe injury or illness, relationship breakdown, death of loved ones, problems or stress in the workplace or at home or in the local community, and so on.

Having said that, I do have to concede that there is something that is often called "cosmic consciousness". Unfortunately it is actually possible, in rare cases, that one can gain this before one even attains to what I recently called "enlightenment of the Spirit". I'll discuss some of the dangers of premature access to cosmic consciousness in another post.

Continuing on now, at the level we'd got to in the previous post. We have seen the spirit blossom into freedom and great power and sovereignty and equanimity and evenhandedness. We have also seen it then, rather miraculously, progressively raise and expand the soul practically up to the same beautiful level as itself. (Not quite perfectly so, by the way, in either case, but near enough.) Just keep meditating masterfully and staying very honest with yourself and getting your outer life right and exposing yourself to many different situations and "energies" of all kinds and coming to eventually master many of them, and you could arrive at this point one day, if you haven't already.

Some Indian teachers claim that at some point you lose all your individuality and just merge into God -- rather as the drop "rejoins" the ocean. I claim to know it certainly doesn't work quite that way. However, if we consider the spirit's upliftment and expansion of the soul, I suspect what the soul experiences at this point (its mind-blowing near-"rejoining" of the spirit) could very easily have been mistaken by some as supposedly being a "liberation" from having any individuality any more. (I say: in the realm of spirituality, we can do perfectly well without superstitious, and also all fear-porn, overtones.)

At this new level, meditation based from the head center involves the following. Through meditation you will have already learnt how to easily switch most of your attention off from the thinking mind, your outer personality. Over time, or at this point, the concentration or one-pointedness you are centered in gradually opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within, which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and higher-worlds knowledge.

What happens next, at least as I have experienced it on a number of occasions (maybe ten or a little more -- but just the once should normally suffice, I think), is that during some intense meditation it feels like very benevolent beings are cutting open the entire top and back of your cranium and doing massive-scale brain surgery on you. That's how it felt to me on each occasion, physically and energetically, no exaggeration. Briefly scary too, in bizarre ways, but only fir brief moments and then I would get reassured by the beauty and gentleness of the energy. Also, each time I very, very strongly felt the benevolence and great subtlety of the beings (or forces?) working seemingly with "knives" etc that were painless on my physical brain and on the energy flowing through it. Most likely, very little of this, if any, was physical -- it just felt as if at least half of it was physical. Also, I could feel with great certainty that I was totally protected from any interference from hostile forces or beings throughout.

Towards, and immediately after, the end of this whole operation, you feel strongly compelled to open the silent mental consciousness physically upward to all that is (metaphysically, but also somehow physically) above the mind. After a time you then feel your consciousness rising phjysically upward. In the end it rises beyond that lid which has so long kept it tied down in the body (and brain). and finds that centre above the head (the newly-born oversoul chakra) where it is liberated into the Infinite. There it begins to come into contact with what is in the Divine worlds: the universal Self, the Divine Peace, Divine "Light", Divine Power, Divine knowledge, bliss, and so on; to enter into that and become that, and to feel the beginnings of the descent of some of these things into the nature of one's own being.

A word of caution, though. Remember that the concentration of the consciousness in the head is only a preparation for its rising to the oversoul centre above; otherwise, you could get shut up in your own mind. Also, be reassured: a big part (or even a tiny part) of your upper or back skull has NOT been physically cut off, nor somehow physically pried open big-time.

In the next post I'll do my best to describe the similar opening into the Divine that comes through concentration in the heart center in combination with the solar plexus and through fully feeling how good it actually is simply to be alive.

For some the journey via mental concentration is easier, while for others it's the path via concentration on and through the heart center.

Another point: liberation, of any sort, always results in your having the gift of more power. And power should never be used blindly, or in an unaware fashion. But we need greater empowerment in order to grow stronger, and to create various things which are genuinely needed.

TraineeHuman

14th March 2022, 22:47

Before the post I've promised that will attempt a description of what happens when one activates fully from the heart center, I'd like first to explain a certain rather universal principle that helps explain something I described in the previous post.

We've all heard of the esoteric principle of "as above, so below", and (people should also know) that it isn't always true that "as below, so above" (as the "official" ancient formulations of the "as above, so below" principle did emphasize). In this post I'd like to try to explain a little how some of what lies "above" is frequently invisible "below".

I don't know if people are familiar with the story of Flatland. Flatland is a mythical two-dimensional world (in the mathematical sense of "dimensions") where the inhabitants all have some consciousness but they are all polygons (of however many sides) or circles or rectangles (including squares), or just straight lines or points. According to the story, that world can also contain the outline of a glove. If a *(three-dimensional) glove happens to get placed in 3D-space in such a way that an outline of its shape (a two-dimensional hand shape) appears in Flatland, then the story goes as follows. It's possible for the human owner of that glove to pick the glove up and rotate it through 180 degrees, then put it down so that once again the Flatlanders can see its shape, but it's now a left-hand shape because of the 180 degrees rotation. The point I want to emphasize here is that to the Flatlanders, the whole rotation process will have occurred invisibly, and indeed unknowably, to them.

In a similar kind of way, there exists a general principle that some (even much) of what occurs at a higher level of reality is quite invisible, and often inexplicable, to an individual at a lower level of reality. This principle explains why Source itself inevitably appears in many ways to be empty, "void", and seemingly "nothing" until one notices some of its actions or effects. Also, that is why in order to open up into the astral+mental+intuitive (or soul) + spirit expansion that happens inside you when you connect permanently with the (otherwise rarely seen) thousand-petalled lotus chakra, it's almost inevitable that the top half of your head, and above, will initially feel like "nothing", almost as if it had somehow been painlessly chopped off.

TraineeHuman

18th March 2022, 09:01

Before continuing to the next post I promised, I believe this is a good time to pause to clarify some truth regarding whether, and in what ways, the individual soul could be immortal, as distinct from impermanent. After all, I've spoken of "your soul" and "your Spirit".

One point all the major ancient Eastern traditions agree on, along with contemporary philosophers and other appropriate professionally qualified theorists in this field, is that what we normally think of as "our" soul or mind is in fact actually the universal consciousness, appearing in and through our physical body and energy field. At this point, though, it helps to bring up the philosopher Hume's story of a sock. There was once a sock which, over time, gradually had so many patches get sewn onto it that after a time there was none of the original material left, so that it was now all patches. Question now is, is it still the same sock? And if not, then at what point exactly did it stop being the same sock?

So, for a whole lot of different reasons, I eventually claim that although the soul keeps going through many changes, at the end of each change it's still the same individual soul. And that in this way, by going through a very long evolutionary trail within a lifetime and also through many lifetimes and so on, a human soul remains eternal -- but always changing. The problem is not in the changes, but in our notions that "staying the same individual" implies things like in effect being frozen in time.

I also take it as given that each human soul undergoes many life-lessons and eventually learns a substantial amount from those lessons -- enough to cause it to change for the better. Notice also that although there is only one consciousness, we all consider that that consciousness is "our own, individual" mind, and supposedly not our neighbor's (unless we investigate properly and find it is indeed the same consciousness acting in them too). On the other hand, the best evidence I'm aware of is that, for example, unfriendly aliens abduct egos (i.e., self-concepts), and never souls. The trouble is, the soul is, so to speak, one of the "babies" of consciousness, and consciousness in itself is way too powerful for any individual alien to mess with, if that was even possible.

I had intended to go in detail through some of the reasons why various Vedantist schools and teachers have argued that a careful examination of what they know the detailed process leading to rebirth to involve shows there is no point in that process that involves the abolition of individuals. Also, there are certain qualities of ecstatic oneness with the Divine as their own inner self that truly liberated masters achieve and from which, for certain reasons, there can be no fall. I also have another two arguments of my own, but this is probably enough philosophization (used to explore reality) for now.

Why do people still fall for fear porn? (I have my psychological theories why, but let's not go into those.)

TraineeHuman

20th March 2022, 02:19

There is a very deep joy always present deep inside the heart. All of us can, in principle, find it there, and liberate it (and so us). And, also in principle, we can do so any time, if only we can learn to step right out of our "moods".

The heart is always seeking to integrate or unify at least some of the interactions you have and those that are latently present within you. Here we are interested in how its unifying energy can be central to opening up something spectacularly higher in you in a lasting way. And doing so through major experience of a "higher enlightenment" (or "fuller, more integrated incarnation") -- provided, presumably, you have reached the stage where you are ready for it. (And yes, it's really in the end just a way of making your inner joy easier to access, and as full as possible.)

The heart itself (in the non-physical sense) always works its magic by opening, which always opens up the soul at the same time. Open-endedness seems to be possible for us primarily because of the heart, and it is only through open-endedness that a glorious future for us is possible. With that opennness, the heart is also very good at perceiving how we can get overloaded with the pictures (the anxieties, the delusions, the obsessions) that the mind (including the subconscious mind) has captured. These all bury the true self in a layer of darkness and garbage. But in spite of those burdens, the heart always carries some sense of our real self, of a greater truth.

The heart doesn't work through words, but through feelings and through total (at least momentary) acceptance and inclusion and merging. That makes it hard or impossible to portray its actions through words words words other than something poetic or allegorical, but I'm doing my best here, in the interests of accurate description.

To make it even a little tougher to describe, rather than the "usual" kind of opening that our heart often brings us, the kind of opening we're really looking at here is an integral one -- it integrates the heart, and the mind, and the will, while also accessing the great power of Source "above"; plus, thereby, bringing down the Force of the higher consciousness into the body's system, where it works to alter habits and one's shadow's "wiring". This works, and then continues to work further, to all-in transform your whole nature and possibly your whole life.

This opening only works when you have made your heart simple. Usually this will mean that your life will in certain ways also be very simple. (Make it simple, and you'll never regret it!) True simplicity, though, please note, is essentially to do with your capacity to bring profound integration or natural order into what will usually be a complex set of activities in your life. It doesn't necessarily mean living in a cave, at all. But it does usually need to build up strength through a constant psychological discipline of a certain kind, plus regular meditation practice of some kind, and time spent enjoying the beauty and peace of Nature also helps. We're all constantly, daily bombarded by at least some level of evil energies that continually aim to interfere or to slow us, even via TV and advertising, and by toxins and so on and on. That's why we need a discipline and a meditation practice that energetically counters or interrupts all this assault. Also, inner simplicity comes through great inner wholism -- which basically means developing your intuitive level somewhat (and here I don't mean what some may know as your psychic level, but a higher form of direct knowing).

I believe this opening also only works fully if for some time beforehand you have somehow learnt to maintain a fairly constant -- I do mean almost constant -- awareness or remembrance and feeling, or sense, of the presence (or the pregnant silence) of the higher consciousness. I learnt one particular way to experience this regularly in meaningful ways as a result of attending group sessions held by Barry Long in Australia in the eighties and nineties. Although I didn't entirely realize at the time that his method primarily involved the opening of the (higher) heart center, during the years of carrying out the practice I noticed I did become more and more intensely (feeling-)conscious of what was inside of me and inside of my energy field. I went through several years where I was seeing my outward life as
superficial and empty, with no connection with the soul/heart -- a phase which seems almost inevitable to go through, given the intensity of the higher heart. Most ordinary people around me also saw their outward life as superficial, it seemed, but they certainly had no satisfactory solution for that problem. By contrast, usually when I consciously went into my inner consciousness, both in Barry's presence and less intensely in my ordinary life, I felt a calm, pure existence that was tranquil and somehow altogether full of the most delicious stillness.

That inward movement took place in many different ways, but it was always a matter of truly "feeling what it's like simply to be alive", and to notice how extremely joyful and pleasurable that is. Simple!

Well, simple once you learn how to do it almost anywhere, and you get deep enough into it. But how did I get to be able to keep it at hand almost all the time? Practice, practice, practice, everywhere. After that, more practice, and more practice. (Wouldn't you like to be able to wake up one morning and feel how wonderful it is simply to be alive -- like you sometimes did as a kid?) Sometimes, at first, I'd also learn to do it through a complex experience combining all the signs of a complete plunge. There was a sense of going in or, deep down, a feeling of the movement towards inner depths. Often there was even a palpable stillness, and while I was sitting on a chair my limbs would seem to disappear, or partly disappear, yet in a pleasant way. Prior to disappearing they would sometimes go numb or stiff, but in a comfortable way. I believe this was the sign of the consciousness retiring from the body, and going inwards under the pressure of a force from above. That's assuming I felt that force at all, because it was itself just so profoundly empty, but in a pleasant way. After practising for some time I would become used to my head seemingly becoming flat-out empty (and dark), just part of the intelligent field of
"living" space that seemed to be everywhere around. You might have a feeling of waves surging up, and mounting to the head, which again, similarly, brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. In traditional terms, this would be described as the ascending of the lower consciousness in the person to meet the greater consciousness above. It's a spontaneous rush upwards of the whole lower consciousness, sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body. This descent is, of course, felt as a pouring in of calm and peace, of force and power, of light, of joy and ecstasy, of wideness and freedom and knowledge, of a Divine Being or a Presence. Sometimes it's one of these, sometimes several of them or all together. The movement of ascension (in the traditional sense, of individual liberation and not of humanity ascending as a whole) has different results. It may liberate the consciousness so that one feels no longer in the body, but above it; or else spread in wideness with the body either almost non-existent or only a point in one's free expanse. It may enable the being, or some part of the being, to go out from the body and move elsewhere, and this
action is usually accompanied by some kind of partial samadhi or else even a complete trance. Or, it may result in feeling no longer limited by the body and the habits of the external nature. Instead, consciousness is able to enter the inner depths of the soul and to move and live in the worlds that correspond to these parts of your nature. It's the repeated and constant ascent of the lower consciousness that enables the mind, the emotions, and the physical awareness to come into touch with the higher planes up to the level of pure Spirit, and get impregnated with their light and power and influence. It is the repeated and constant descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force that is the means for the transformation of the whole being and the whole nature. Once this descent becomes a habitual thing, the Force begins to work, no longer from above only or from behind the veil, but consciously in the person himself. But please don't abuse that power.

During this practice the realization of the Divine Spirit (what I called "enlightenment of the Spirit" in a recent post) can come, or have already come, at any time, perhaps long before one reaches the level of the enlightened Spirit. This can happen on any plane, on the mental plane, the emotional plane, and even on the physical plane. On these lower levels the realization is only partial, because everything on these levels has limitations. Only when one reaches that higher level of the Consciousness will the Divine Consciousness appear in all its vastness.

When one has reached the level of enlightened Consciousness, and has become aware of his Divine Spirit, one can also gain Cosmic Consciousness. Cosmic Consciousness is also possible before one has reached the enlightenment of the Spirit, and one is still dwelling in his lower nature, on all levels (body, emotional field and mind). But this has its risks, as one then can become the playground of all kinds of forces.

When one gains Cosmic Consciousness while still being in the lower levels of transformation of body, emotions, and mind, and one experiences, then the ordinary cosmic forces and the beings behind these forces may enter. (This is also what sometimes happens through drug experiences. You certainly don't want to open some doors prematurely!) So it's much safer to first attain Self-Realization and then explore the Cosmic Consciousness.

The phenomena I've described occurred for me in some of the sessions, but rarely in the early sessions (despite my years of meditating naturally since early childhood), in Barry's small groups (mostly held in Melbourne, Australia, or Sydney). Unfortunately, first you probably need to go through many, many sessions of nothing happening when you meditate, or very little. You experience an energy of "stuckness" of some sort, maybe for at least months on end at first, but it's all your own subconscious stuckness. So, please appreciate that I went through something like that too with learning Barry's "feeling the aliveness" meditation, and only after that did most of the kind of phenomena I've described start breaking through.

TraineeHuman

23rd March 2022, 07:25

In this thread I've tried to explain the accessing of, or being accessed by, various higher levels of consciousness -- and mostly I've used words, which can easily bring everything down to the mental planes, unless you yourself have already experienced and are familiar with territory beyond the mental (beyond forms). Still, so far I've left out the real "elephant in the room". This is something that in my opinion picks up at the cutting edge of where the traditional great spiritual ways of self-development ultimately lead to.

And to go really further, we must of course keep cutting off most of our expectations. Only in that way can we ever truly go into the unknown -- which life makes us all do on a much smaller scale all the time anyway, but now we need to do it very consciously, as an act of creating something genuinely new. We all need to become artists of life, as far as we're able, now at this particular time of history, I believe. So, then, we need to clear aside all the frontloading that we can, all prior ideas (including most of what I'm writing here, of course).

Even what most people call "God" or "the Universe" is really a great energy, and many spiritually inclined or developed people have tasted it, by whatever name or no-name, in certain ways or to certain degrees. But -- to be very honest -- I believe there is actually something above that, quite beyond that, that has also been manifesting on our planet for at least a few decades. The big problem for me right now is, how to describe that "something super-above" in such a way that you, the reader, will at least in some way "get" what I'm hoping to be able to point at.

I suspect that is precisely what has made the dark forces on (and beyond) the planet concerned. It has been their knowing about this phenomenon -- and being altogether frightened by it. If someone reaches a certain level of consciousness, Divine or benevolent forces will in certain ways upgrade the physical body and nervous system itself, not to mention the astral and mental bodies and the soul. And that upgrading of your soul will then permanently impact the group soul of all humanity. Too bad -- for the dark forces.

In my next post I'll start by exploring what transcendence means, because an understanding of that is clearly one of the building blocks. Hopefully after that I can continue to probe into some other aspects of the unknown. Let's hope that at the end of this little project to make talk of "an energy that is beyond even God" sound intelligible in some way and not insane. If anyone has any serious contribution to add or suggest, please feel free to express it here. (And wish me luck.)

Johan (Keyholder)

23rd March 2022, 08:15

"Something super-above". That's well put indeed.

Where we are (now) and in most places and times in this universe or multiverse, we are dealing with God and (the) Devil. Or in other words, go(O)d and (D)evil. "Nomen est omen", that's an old adage. The super-above, I do think it is described, here and there, in words that seem most of the time meaningless because it is just so far beyond words.

It is very possible that "what we do and came to do" is bring parts of the unknowable into the unknown and from there to the known. It may even be the essence of creation, existence, who knows.

Living in worlds of duality - as we all are now - makes the above task a major challenge. Time and Space are relative; in Reality, they don't exist (or not as we "think" they do). Those of us that understand "simultaneous lives" and are not (anymore) in the sequential lives (cycles) have some understanding of this. How to describe what's "in the super-above" is material for poetry, mainly.

The gnostics (some of them, as there were hundreds of "sorts" of gnosticism) described this super-above. The Pleroma. They describe the demiurge, the meaning of Abraxas, and a cosmology that may be (MAYBE) close to reality (or Reality, I'm not sure). Did they approach the Unknowable better than we usually do? It's possible. Only by personal experience can some of us get a bit closer to "the Truth". And when reporting back (here), it's a huge task to TRY to explain what happened. I do think there are very, very few that come even close to this explanation of such experiences.

The billions of souls that exist are all like individual Matrioshka dolls. Some are much further along the way to the "inner core" than others. No one is "better" than anyone else, we all are on a different stage of the path.

Embarking on a Journey to bring (some of) the Unknowable into the Unknown and further into the known is a very valid quest, it's also probably what the Grail was all about. That Holy Grail was "pointing at" what is described here, I believe. We should learn to accept that "absolutes" don't have a place here, in our "material worlds". It's all relative, BUT, we can go on a search for the "permanent", always and everywhere, because Time and Space don't (really) exist.

Good luck on your Quest Traineehuman! I am just another one making a similar Journey and it is always great to meet others that are taking this Path of Adventure.

Orph

23rd March 2022, 14:51

I too have felt that there is "something" far, far greater than what might be perceived as 'God', or a 'oneness with the universe' type of thing. You are not alone there. I also agree with what you said about not having any preconceived ideas as we continue our journey into the unknown. No "good luck" needed here. You, (we), are going to be just fine. :thumbsup:

TraineeHuman

24th March 2022, 03:11

Christian doctrine traditionally affirms both the immanent and the transcendent nature of the Divine. This is also affirmed by all the major religions, although in practice in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity generally the immanence of the Divine gets de-emphasized, if not, also, implicitly very, very much denied.

Why shouldn't the immanence of the Divine be played down? some might say. After all, saying that the Divine is both immanent and transcendent appears to be an outright contradiction. But, wait. There is such a thing as higher (or transcendental) logic. Reality truly is miraculous, in some respects at least. As Johan has just pointed out in a whole number of different ways. Now consider also the following statement from Sri Aurobindo (and apply it to the opposites of transcendence and immanence):

“Transcendence transfigures; it does not reconcile, but rather transmutes opposites into something surpassing them that effaces their oppositions.”
(The Christian mystic Nicolas of Cusa also said something very similar to this, and proclaimed it to be the most important of all truths. Maybe he was right?) So, transcendence actually, quite literally, transcends even itself! But what I think is so interesting here is what these opposites as they exist in man (and woman) get transmuted into. Because by Aurobindo's and Nicolas' logic, that must be something both divine and human at the same time, and it's clearly not just the "mystery" of the baby Jesus, either. If the opposites of the transcendent and the immanent get transmuted into something more integral, that makes us all into being latently, but essentially Jesus (well, brothers and sisters of), so to speak. It makes Divinity into a naturally human quality that all of us can potentially grow into.

Becoming Divine (whatever that exactly means)... We were born for this. If we truly are children of the stars (of the star beings, or of our own star souls), then our present consciousness and existence is only a stepping stone. We instinctively dream of and continually seek to create a more perfect world. Our deepest inner need is to become the butterfly that replaces the ugly, awkward caterpillar that we are, just for the moment, now. We are the ones who need to make ourselves transcendent, and the only ones that can do so. Only then the Divine will be seen to be undeniably also immanent to (i.e., be in) us.

TraineeHuman

25th March 2022, 04:16

On the trail of the Divine...

How do you get the notion of the Divine in the first place, as an adult or in your teens? Not, I suggest, because of Sunday school etc, but through realizing that you truly know that something like the Divine, something transcendent yet fully real and universal, exists. You know it because you seem to directly experience it and feel it, even though vaguely and unclearly, to be underlying all things and to be the only thing worth living for. Plus, as a small child you feel you know that some lost part of you is in some way latently omniscient and omnipotent. You see apparent proof of this throughout your years of growth during infancy because consciousness is as big as the universe and is always present for you.

You also know it, however, because your soul strongly conveys the notion that the Divine exists to you. And the soul never lies.

The soul always knows the truth, at least the truth for you in your situation. But usually, for your consciousness to accurately hear what your soul is saying, you have to have become emotionally very mature and very stable (impulse-free, and free of excitement). Plus you need to have mastered not allowing the thinking mind to lead you or anticipate anything at (preferably) any time. To put it in slightly different words, you can only hear what the soul is saying to you by becoming very, very quiet and extremely aware inside and very, very detached, very impartial, from desiring or preferring anything. There is no other way.

TraineeHuman

27th March 2022, 02:03

So, then, the "news" about the Divine or God apparently all comes via our soul.

Very interesting, in various ways. But also, I think, a relief and convenient for us, because we get all the experience and knowledge of God, faithfully reported in so far as we're willing to receive it, via this go-between which is part of us, if not, indeed, "the real us" in many ways. Even if some part or other of us is altogether Divine, it seems we can only know of it via our soul. We only get the soul's version of God.

It seems to me, then, that the soul often actually has the broadest picture of all. For example, the Divine's view of time will include all times, all eternity, including branches into possible futures and so on. But the soul will see not only all of this (well, in summary form at least), but also (and with great emphasis) our own l i m i t e d human viewpoint of the time we spend or have spent, or may yet spend. This is one way that, paradoxically, in each specific situation the soul's vision is actually broader than the "God's eyeview". I would conclude that this, at least, is one way in which we can and do go beyond the Divine. Also, maybe this is why in The Lord of the Rings the ring-bearer needs to be a very human and soulfully suffering character like Frodo the humanbit, rather than Gandalf or an Elf.

Not only that, but it used to be a puzzle for me why human beings seem so interested in human flaws and overcoming those flaws. The most interesting thing about the hero of any fiction story is apparently always his/her flaws, and then it's all primarily about how does he/she overcome those flaws when put under pressure. Here, again, it's the soul's satisfaction that interests us, and it seems that God's satisfaction here (to the extent that God is a respecter of persons) will come from knowing that there were successful positive outcomes to do with the overall story, merely one part of which was to do with those human flaws being overcome in this case.

TraineeHuman

27th March 2022, 22:47

Now for some very good news. The truth is, the individual soul is itself Divine. It actually is the Divine -- God, if you like -- individuated, that is, "packaged" into an individual version for each of us, without for a moment ceasing to be Divine. It seems to take a very long journey indeed for any of us to fully realize that our "own" individual soul really is that. And it's quite extraordinary, quite miraculous, it seems to me, that God himself (herself) can be entirely "miniaturized" in such a way. (And so, also, the soul itself cannot be limited by any restriction other than its own.) And each of us has a unique special purpose, a unique special action to fulfill. Almost nothing is impossible.

All we need to do, then, is learn how to hear and then listen to our soul, as fully as possible. Not that any of us do this perfectly, but it's something we need to be serious about doing. Early in this thread I was encouraging people to write down their dreams. To do that accurately, you need a pen and a notebook right by your bed, maybe even on the edge of your bed. And the moment you begin to wake up from sleep for any reason, you need to start writing as much as you can still remember of the last dream you had. It's damn uncomfortable, and can quite often feel physically unpleasant, even nauseous, to force yourself to write while you're still only half woken up. But if you want the Divine point of view, fresh out of "the oven", on your current situation of the past two days, you need to stay up and keep writing down the details of that "movie scene" you've just been watching.

Yes, it does take some time to develop that art of accurately "deciphering" the highly poetic and symbolic and sensitive language that the images in your dreams come in. But you can learn to do it if you persist long enough. Actually, forcing yourself to write down the last dream while you're still only half-awake will do wonders to develop the ability to "decipher" dream language. That's because when you wake up, at first you're at least partly still in a theta-state. And if you want to learn how to develop your intuition (your wholistic seeing) or your psychic skills, this is certainly a great practice.

The other way to (begin to) learn to listen to your soul accurately is to learn to honor and listen to what some call "the still, small voice" inside your consciousness. The soul isn't pushy, but it's very gentle instead. You need to learn how to ignore all the "static" in your head and nervous system coming from your mental and emotional bodies. That "static" is made up of such things as: vivid sensations, desires (for acquiring wealth, or experiencing pleasure, and so on), excitement, your prejudices, your precious opinions, or getting "even" or venting in some way. You have to learn how to switch off and largely disconnect from getting caught up in the vividness, the drama, of your prejudices, or of your desire to prove you are right or better or in need of special treatment, or of doing something dramatic about painful things. The soul is continually being drowned out by all that noise, all those bright lights and tinsel that won't count for anything the day when you're on your deathbed. The soul doesn't need to prove anything, to anyone.

TraineeHuman

29th March 2022, 03:31

Humans are here to grow in two different directions at once. The inner realisation is our journey of awakening more and more fully to the soul, activating higher and higher levels of it, and ultimately to the Spirit. This, I suggest, is ultimately an awakening more and more to being centered on what is qualitative and, among other things, on gradually breaking free of subservience to particular forms and even of form itself. AIs can never achieve this fully and essentially.

Our outer expression is a life attuned more and more to the creation of outward mastery by our inner spirit over the world of matter around us, ultimately leading to our future total mastery over physical matter, as far as that is possible. AIs are very good at doing this, but on the other hand can never do more than "simulate" an attempted awakening to soul and Spirit.

For humans, then, the process of creation in this world ends with the highly awakened inner spirit gaining total mastery over the outer matter -- but mastery by taking advantage of practical assistance from AIs whenever it's useful. AIs wouldn't be here, I believe, if they weren't useful to us in the ulrimate scheme of
things.

To achieve the inner realization we were meant to have, our soul has plenty of waking up to do, from the almost inevitable "hangover" that comes from being stupefied by attachments or even just acclimatizations to the ways of the world of matter. There's no true glory in the world of matter. Nothing deathless or timeless or infinite or unmeasurable. Our soul, on the other hand, is like a flake of the unquenchable world-fire, a much-needed organ of pure Existence itself, which by its very nature is immortal.

TraineeHuman

31st March 2022, 03:03

Some comments regarding hostile/evil/demonic/hostile AI/archontic forces.

Yes, such forces do exist in the lower astral world, and also, of course, unfriendly aliens (or AI) do exist in the physical and lower astral at least. Their primary weapon, however, is fear. The last thing anyone should do is to be afraid of them (consciously or otherwise). Your best primary defense is to simply not be afraid of them because to do otherwise is to expose yourself to their power, when they're active or present nearby. Your vulnerability to their attacks is only in your (ordinary, thinking) mind -- but they can masterfully read your mind to try and find your vulnerabilities. They do try at some time to in some way discourage or attack everyone who is serious about advancing their awareness or about developing spiritually.

You are a soul, and therefore have the capacity to free your mind, cleanse your mind, overrule your mind. You also have a higher mind, which is above all this. Your higher mind has an enormous capacity and power. Love erases fear quite naturally and automatically, as also, more generally, does the genuine soul-led perception of higher positivity or wisdom. Ultimately, beyond the physical and lower worlds, there is no such thing at all as a "battle between good and evil". Unlike what we see in the physical world, in the astral the forces of good stay separate from the forces of evil, and vice-versa. (Well, hostile forces can sometimes also wear disguises that make them look positive, but those disguises are temporary and can relatively easily be "busted".) That is why these hostile or evil forces "normally" are in desperate need of intrinsically neutral devices or instruments or vehicles, which begin as things which are innocent and aren't intrinsically evil or hostile at all. The media is a major example of this, particularly at our present time. Similarly, governments are a phenomenon that came about to try and ensure that the common good would be served, but the hostile forces have of course for a long time worked overtime to corrupt and infect the originally intended functions and activities there.

Stay in close touch with your soul and what it values, and it will be very hard for the hostiles to even touch you significantly. Be careful what you read, and what movies you watch, and try to live with true character and stay awake and aware and discriminate between what's real and good and what's deceptive or what indulges the ego or taking things personally. You should have some kind of meditation or spiritual practice that puts you regularly (daily, for twenty minutes or more) in touch with the bliss or at least the joy and love that is at the core of simply being alive as a human. This will also over time create a deep inner calm somewhere (perhaps almost hidden) in your core, which no attack from the hostiles can dismantle. Also, persistence is a major key to success in anything, and it can overcome any defeat.

The desperation being shown by the hostiles these days would suggest, surely, that they consider that in the big picture they must be losing. The human soul is, to put it mildly, much tougher than some of the fear porn tries to suggest -- I mean, tries to dogmatically assert. Unfortunately, people have long used the word "soul" in misleading ways. For example, "soul music" usually depicts strong feelings including a really huge serve of misery, but usually also with the inner strength to stand up to that misery. I have discovered and verified that the soul exists intrinsically beyond time and space, but also about half of it, so to speak, enters fully into time and space.

Yes, the soul can let itself be extremely vulnerable, but I claim it could only do that if at the same time, underneath, it was quite unbreakable. True gentleness is not a sign of fragility but of great strength, and in this case, of immortality. The soul is far too tough to be maimed forever by whatever suffering or maiming or destruction its human bodies may undergo. Don't believe that fear porn. (Do you really know enough to be able to judge accurately whether that piece of fear porn is accurate or even honest?)

TraineeHuman

2nd April 2022, 06:22

Some more comments to do with hearing the "still, small voice".

The full and true and accurate answers to all your personal questions are already there, in the (deep) silence of your own heart center. But you need to learn to llisten to and through that silence, and find each answer.

Unfortunately,that answer only becomes clear when you "uncover" it via emptying all of (the other parts of) "you" (your self-image, your expectations, and especially by shutting off your thinking mind), because the right answer lives there beautifully surrounded by silence and interbalancing Divine energies. I think G. K. Chesterton (one of a number of Highland poets who knew some mystical secrets, thanks to the influence of the ancient Druids) was talking of something like this also, when he wrote: "Step softly under snow and rain to find the place where men might pray. The place is all so very plain that we might lose the way."

Listening to and surrendering totally to that silence means, among other things, ignoring all the external factors and causes and circumstances and external forces that you may think may affect the outcome of what you're asking about. Some of these may be relevant, but for the time being you need to "not-know" about them, or "un-know" them, and get their influence right out of your system, as if you were mentally "shaking them off". You also need to get balanced and silent beforehand -- grounded, unexcited, open-minded to any possibility. All desire and fear put away.

If you're not sure if you're doing this completely the right way, here's a Raja Yoga technique which can hopefully be used like "training wheels" for this. You sit down and keep performing, for the sake of the exercise, a process of going ever inwards. This means you don't allow any thought to go outwards. This means that everything you begin to see, hear, smell, or otherwise notice or think of that's outside of your body, you immediately ignore it and kill that thought or sensation. You allow only thoughts that turn inwards, i.e., that are about your own mind (or your own consciousness). The ultimate in navel gazing. You keep doing this until your mind stops bringing up thoughts connected with outward things altogether. This leaves you with only your mind's inner thoughts to itself coming up. The next step now is that you refuse to listen to or acknowledge even these remaining inner thoughts. Bingo, you now have complete silence, with only what Yoga calls the Witness left. Now ask your question, wait at least thirty seconds (feels like sixty) in complete silence, and then take the first answer that pops up (which will now be brought to you by the Force itself).

By the way, your (higher) heart center is actually located in the exact middle of your chest and far in, almost, but not quite, at your back. (If you send your astral attention travelling from the front of your chest and into your (higher) heart center, it feels like you're going a long way back, and like you're "falling" deeper and deeper, and you'd then appreciate that's some distance from the physical heart.) The heart chakra is located in front of the higher heart, near the front of the chest. The heart chakra acts as an amplifier of all it receives (on the astral or the physical level), and so one can easily mistake the messages from the still, small voice as coming from the heart chakra.

The "still, small voice" is also in effect the same thing as the (true) voice of your intuition. It does also involve interaction with (parts of) your right brain. If (as happens too rarely, unfortunately) the higher head center has been opened as I described in post #2786) (so that the "thousand petaled lotus" is there, around, and extending well above, the head), it's possible to obtain from the higher heart center accurate direct knowledge, via the intuition, regarding almost any important topic, and not just regarding one's individual issues.

TraineeHuman

6th April 2022, 07:15

To recap, the soul comes out of the Divine, as a pure part of it, but never becomes in any way or degree "un-Divine", no matter what things may happen to you in the course of you living your life. (So the mistakes didn't really count, except to serve in your development and as lessons in getting your life right). So, the soul is just simply the Divine made individual. Paradoxically, they remain eternally one.

I appreciate I've said as much in a previous post, but the repetition is to emphasize how important and amazing this is. A further piece of good news is, of course, that to truly find and know your soul is a very good and very easy and tangible and precise way for you to be united with the Divine. And, if you can indeed find your soul on a permanent basis, there'll be no need to ever bother about the ego again. That's because as long as you're actively aware of and fully receptive to your soul, no ego will be there. For that time, ego will cease to exist in you. Easier said than done, I know, but you can work to get better and better at it.

But to make this real in your life, first there's the matter of learning to become conscious of your soul. So far I've mentioned two ways of doing this. One way is to write down all your dreams, and learn to see things in your life the way your soul sees them. A second way is to practise and master constantly listening to "the still small voice" whenever you get reminded to. Now here's a third way of contacting your soul: Go deep into yourself (i.e. the heart region, particularly towards the back of the exact center of your chest; psychically "feel" what's happening there) and hold the steady intention to receive what's there. A fourth way is through the beauty and peace of Nature. A fifth way is through simply holding the wholehearted intention to do it.

Next. There's also a very long, gradual process involved. But after all, let me suggest that only your soul really has the right to govern your life. So, you need to work to gradually integrate and harmonize your mind, your life and your body with all this, and learn to deeply trust what the soul knows. The power and light received by the most developed parts of you gradually do spread to the rest of the being by a process of assimilation, but during this period of assimilation the progress of the parts of you that are in front, leading your way, seems to be continually interrupted by your inner chaos. This does take enormous patience and persistence to get through, and takes years of not giving up, and learning not to take things personally. The soul never experiences suffering, at all, actually, but the other parts of you or your (lower) consciousness do. That means the contact between your outer consciousness and the soul's consciousness isn't well established. Anyone in whom the contact has been truly well established is always (or virtually always) happy or at least totally OK, no exaggeration. Also they begin to have access to what is truly permanent and eternal. But the length of time and the intensity of the work on yourself this takes no reason for you to give up. Patience is necessary for this. But, what price are you willing to pay to achieve real satisfaction with your life? Human beings have many different facets to their psyche, and it takes time and effort to harmonize and unify them all, and the process at times isn't easy by any means. But this is a task that every individual has to do for himself/herself. Only you can find the enthusiasm in you to do it, but of course your soul will be with you, helping 200%.

TraineeHuman

8th April 2022, 05:00

At conception, your soul begins to grow a new astral body and a new mental body for you, and the astral body at first develops faster than the growing physical fetus. The physical development of the organism is of course driven by hormones and enzymes and blood and so on and so forth in the mother's body combined with the DNA of the fetus itself. But the soul also plays a hand energetically in the development of the fetus. The soul has its own vested interest in doing what it can (with what it has) to help transform the growing organism into a "vehicle" that can best receive and interact with the soul throughout the physical life to come.

The soul continues to in (at least) small ways attempt to create healing opportunities for the body throughout one's life, in the hope that the body may be a better vehicle for it. (Some studies claim to have found that the occupational group with the longest life expectancy was Zen Buddhist monks. That would not surprise me. The awakened soul is indeed more able to effectively heal the body in a physical sense, among others.)

In this way the soul consciousness enters into, or mingles with ("incarnates" a little more fully into), the bodily consciousness (the combined consciousness of the cells) more and more, usually up till some point in late middle age. When you do have an awakened soul, it isn't easy to ignore its wishes. So it's better to obey any of its orders or promptings or inspirations that you notice, some of which aren't easy or don't initially feel pleasant. This is the only true inspiration anyway. Everything else is a mixture of the soul's view and the mind and emotional body's view. Obviously, that will only have confused and mixed results in the end, and eventually leave you still "lost" or "languishing".

But please notice that even once the soul has truly awakened, in most cases it's unlikely that you'll listen to all it seeks to guide you to do and be. The soul is very good at freeing you from disorder and chaos, whereas the emotional drives or desires and knee-jerk reactions and the mental imprisonment in your self-concept will often mostly just perpetuate the disorder. Struggling with difficulties is often easier when you see them as coming from “outside,” as an attack from outside, than if you think they are part of you, or caused or asked for by you -- but in some ultimate sense they always are, and you needed them, to make you strong. Plus, the soul is very good at not reacting to all sorts of things, and that, of course, is in itself also a great form of guidance and education for you. But it's very rare for someone to genuinely know and understand that the soul is that wise. It's a long, quite often gradual, learning process. "Peak experiences" be damned. Practically speaking, awakening is like a sunrise, or like a great many sunrises. Most of the time it doesn't fully "take" straight away. Not at the everyday level of life, which is where the rubber meets the road.

There is also another side to the "life" of the soul in us. This comes from the fact that only the soul can unlock latent abilities of many various kinds within us (perhaps coming from past lifetimes). For example, it can unlock the ability to be (at least) a reasonably effective salesperson. That amounts to being able to be an effective influencer with a wide range of different people, plus being personally enthusiastic about, and knowledgeable about the product you are trying to sell, and its applications. This is not to deny that every single last infant needs to quickly learn to be a good salesperson, for the sake of his or her survival. But some have unlocked the natural ability to do this extremely well. Likewise to abilities of many different kinds, some of them spiritually "exotic" and so on.

But there are also "levels" of even more full opening and union with the soul. Primarily, in this world, the soul (or intuition) tries to express itself (and surrender to the divine peace and bliss) through transformations of the mind and of the heart. But that takes much longer yet again. (In a past post I tried to describe how there's a journey of what I call "descension" after the thousand-petaled lotus chakra above and around the head has fully opened. The first "descension" (opening up each of the chakras again but in the reverse order from going up) unleashes the Force and inner power. I suspect that many great creative artists accessed this. I believe there are three such ascensions and "descensions" before one can achieve physical immortality, but I may be wrong about that. Apparently some masters have achieved such immortality, but maybe they chose to move on to elsewhere.

TraineeHuman

13th April 2022, 01:42

Some seem to take it for granted that there is such a thing as "soul capture" of a dire kind. I'd like to try to explain why I consider some of the implicit assumptions behind that to be absurd. Of course, the underlying assumptions or frameworks that any of us make (about what the "playing field" is in which human development and soul development occur, including after death) will frontload whatever aspects and capabilities of the soul we do and don't assume or accept to exist or to be dominant or important, or even relevant. For instance, I don't ("personally"!) accept that individuality has to mean "the ego", or even that it necessarily means something negative or unconstructive at all.

But, to narrow down to the topic of the soul, there is a mighty amount of misunderstanding prevalent these days regarding what is the soul. The soul is not, exactly, the individual, let alone the ego. Nor does the soul have to be something personal. The soul is not the personality. It's also not the self, either, because it's the higher self. Equally, I don't accept that the individual soul, even on its ownsome, lacks having enormous access to multiple types of universes (with varying types of cosmologies) and infinities, and hence, importantly, direct access to profound powers and freedoms. It ought to be your boss, and thank goodness it sometimes is. And this is a boss that stays with the action, and doesn't go rest somewhere in the clouds -- well, it patiently waits till, hopefully, you develop the good sense to ask it for advice or help.

So, then, whatever it is that apparently gets "captured", I would suggest that couldn't be the soul (the higher self) but it could perhaps conceivably be the personality -- either the astral (emotional) body or the mental body, or even both. Or, it could perhaps even be some of the "rubbish energy" that everyone leaves behind in the physical world when they die. This is well known to clairvoyants and energy workers as the death imprint, and it has toxic physical properties, rather like a large dose of 5G energy -- but it can be healed and removed.

By the way, to digress at the end and go off-topic and jump partly out of some other somewhat stale New Age mindsets, in some ancient esoteric traditions the fully developed soul was considered to be what was known as a "monad". In the early eighteenth century, Leibniz (Head of the German Masons and of the German Academy of Arts and Sciences, and so on, and an historical successor to centuries of alchemy (think "pre-science") wrote a philosophical work called The Monadology. There he described a "monad" as: "... nothing but a simple substance, that enters into compounds. By 'simple' is meant 'without parts'." I suggest that's rather very tricky "labelling" by Leibniz, because the Western esoteric tradition (and gnosticism) had long been talking about "monads", but considering them to be souls or certain kinds of groups of human souls. "Nothing but a simple substance"? I don't think so. Well, not unless you add that here "simplicity" is a very profound thing. (And The Monadology does go on to make it clear that the monads' not having "parts" was the case because they are each in fact accurate "mirror images" of some sort and in some degree of the entire universe.) Also, the monads together made up the entire universe (and it doesn't seem to me likely that Leibniz meant just the physical universe, either.) Leibniz claimed to prove that this particular world (of the monads) that we are in is "the best of all possible worlds". Seems to me that that also involves the astral, because that is a collection of "all possible worlds" if by a "world" you mean something in certain ways close to resembling the physical world we believe we know. Incidentally, Voltaire also noted that, in Leibniz's philosophy, it was also true that "every evil (in this "best of all possible worlds") is a necessary consequence.")

TraineeHuman

20th April 2022, 00:03

In a previous post, I gave what I'd consider a rather superficial (though, within those parameters, accurate) summary of Krishnamurti's philosophy/ teaching. But now that we have been starting to look at the soul in detail, this opens up the way to briefly look at what Krishnamurti said more seriously and deeply. In fact, to me, practically everything he proclaimed and explored was, very precisely, an exact expression of how the soul truly sees or experiences reality (and Reality).

So, then, some parts of his "teaching" to me amount to a quite accurate description of what happens when, and where, the formless intersects with the world of mental forms. Which is also, for me, precisely the viewpoint and primary dwelling place of the soul. And in certain ways it's truly the most fascinating of all "places" anywhere. This is where the unknown collides with the known. Quite imagination-boggling. It's also the departure point from which one can go beyond all time and space -- while, at the same time, all that is unknown can potentially in some manner be miraculously changed and carried "down" right through that place and into the higher mental worlds and thence also to the astral worlds and even the physical world.

This kind of collision or interface between the unknown and the known is also experienced by the best creative artists and creative scientists, and called "inspiration". But we can all try to bring it into daily life, and succeed in doing so in small ways. Every so often in situations during my life people have asked me: "Why are you trying to reinvent the wheel?" And I can't explain to them that the soul has already seen far more glorious inventions than a major improvement on the wheel would be. And that to seek to "filter" a formless precursor of (for example) something even more ingenious than the wheel is something the soul lives for, and knows can certainly be done. And it's what the delight of all creation is all about. It's a delight beyond measure.

"It's possible!" says the soul (and the Spirit). In the most delightful depths of experiencing and being the Unknown, such things are taken (and enjoyed) seriously, and form the cutting edge that everything else is geared to support. It's the big "yes" of the universe. This also ties in with what I have been saying about "bringing down the Force". By that I mean that, if one develops the proper awareness, one can consciously and quickly "pull down" energies of positivity from higher worlds, when one really needs them, and that (trust me!) these will then get to work and create positive situations and outcomes in one's own life. A very useful thing to be able to implement in the "vale of sorrows" and of randomicity that we live in in this world. (Also, I suspect, it's what people often think they're doing through the "power" of affirmations. But this is the power of directly accessing higher power, and not of words.)

Almost everything Krishnamurti says is very much a continuation of the Gautama Buddha's teaching, but using different, more up-to-date words and concepts. So, for Krishnamurti everything is profoundly relational in its essence. Everything is interconnected and contextual (in varying ways and degrees) with everything else that there is, through relations (or contexts) between relations between yet broader relations. It never stops. Everything you ever do affects everything else. If you "chop up" matter you'll supposedly end up ultimately with rings of quarks and bosons, or photons, or whatever, then a full stop. But interrelationship entangles absolutely everything with everything else ultimately, and there is no point where that ever ends.

Also, just like the Buddha, Krishnamurti taught that the whole ultimate aim of spirituality is to attain freedom from unhappiness (which also implies freedom from suffering (i.e., from experiencing pain, etc as "suffering"), or, equivalently, achieving a deep inner level of total peace or acceptance that nothing can shake or disturb regardless of what is going on in the world and society and situation around one. This means permanently perceiving a transparency through all that is problematic or evil or whatever.

There's also a flipside to that, so to speak. That is, being profoundly open to the unknown, and always in many ways experiencing everything as if for the first time. Notice that this implies a certain level of sensible rebellion against all that is conventional. Also notice that we're getting back to the essential qualities of the soul when it's able to truly express itself. For the soul, every situation (and the soul's continuing independence from external authority) needs to be totally rediscovered afresh, in its own context and its own logic and rules.

Notice also that you won't experience everything as if for the first time unless you truly hold no judgment (or justification or condemnation), no interpretations, no labels, at all, regarding everything or anyone you see or experience. Everything in life becomes a big "leap of faith", as Kierkegaard put it.

That's only one "snapshot" of what's in Krishnamurti's philosophy, and it's not the totality, but it's one taken with an emphasis on the soul's point of view.

TraineeHuman

21st April 2022, 04:50

I believe there are already several threads on the Forum regarding The Hero's Journey. I would like to very briefly interpret that journey in a slightly different way here. That's because it so happens this is also the soul's (true) journey, over and over, throughout all of our life. (I suggest that's why we like to watch movies or plays or read novels or watch TV talent competitions and so on -- to remind us of, and also to reflect from a distance on, what we ourselves are really doing.)

Practically all that we believe we know is built out of what's in our collection of memories. All of that is (precisely) our conditioning. Yes, some of our conditioning (such as professional skills) may quite often serve as a good thing. But life is also continually confronting us with so many critical situations or intense problems to which our conditioning and our education has no answer, at all. Like the hero forced to journey far out of his comfort zone, our mind once again throws its hands up, so to speak, unable to see any reliable way ahead. And yet, like the hero, we obviously must take a blind leap of faith at this point, knowing that the mind will probably not be so lucky as to now somehow hit on the right answer by accident.

Welcome to the world of the soul, where the unknown becomes a very joyful place to adventure in. This is where the mind finally stops searching, because navigating the unknown is beyond its capabilities. Like the hero, it's only when the mind has put everything aside completely, letting the consequences be damned, that the momentum of all the conditioning, of the whole world of the known, can come to a complete stop. The end of all that the mind thinks to be permanent (yet which is all impermanent). The dark night of the mind (and not of the soul, despite what St John of the Cross may have said). Only then does what the intuition, the soul, (holistically) sees and creates as the obvious but novel and ingenious solution, come shining through or bursting forth. This is why the soul is sacred.

TraineeHuman

24th April 2022, 06:14

As far as I can tell, I have experienced, or know, or know of, certain things or phenomena which are timeless (and also beyond space -- i.e., apparently beyond, or not chained to, physical space, nor any location in it). That means they're right in "soul territory". These have been, and remain -- at least in my memory and occasional experience -- in certain ways the most lovable and wonderful and uplifting and important things or phenomena of all. Hence I am moved to try and understand these things a little better intellectually (in addition to celebrating and enjoying them in other ways too).

Because I suspect I didn't find them totally by accident, I believe a little attempted retracing or reflection on how I came upon them shouldn't hurt, along with a little conceptual analysis of their foundations and implications. This may sound just too abstract or "intellectual" for many. But for me, it's also an excuse to bask in a different way in the glorious memory of them. And yes, that could lead to attachment to them, but it could also shed light on possible new lines of approach.

For present purposes, I'll start from the assumption, which Vedanta and ancient Taoism both apparently make, that Spirit (or the supreme Self or Way) is the fundamental underlying or all-permeating reality. There's nothing else, not even "nothing" in the nihilistic sense of Western atheists and materialists. I'm also assuming here (based on my own direct vivid experience that this is so, and also for simplicity) that Spirit in itself quite transcends Time and Space. This would mean that Spirit then merely makes use of the descriptive value of those notions (Time and Space) where appropriate, but that they aren't fundamental "components" of Spirit itself.

After all, we can fully understand what physical space even is only by seeing it as based on the notion of "extension". And that notion is broader than just a physical one, and therefore it must be a spiritual or mental one! That's because all change or movement (in any sense, not just the physical) is based on our having the prior existence of such "extension". And in fact (as you can see when drawing back from the physical), extension must be a spiritual notion, because the mind (and the mind-plus-emotions) itself needs a (subjective as well as objective) mental "space" (or "extension") to live in, which in turn can only be granted and created for it by the Spirit. So, then, what extension actually is is Self's or Spirit's containment
of the entirety of the actions of its own Energy.

Beyond all manifest space-time there exists (there must exist! because we are spirit) a timeless "space" (for lack of a different and better word) that's "larger than the largest and smaller than the smallest", as the Upanishads state, meaning it's beyond all measurable dimensions. It must exist because how else are we even able to stand back and consider "everything in space-time"? And beyond the dimensions of space is -- guess what? Dimensionless space? Or call it Consciousness if you like. But certainly, this is the "Self" described in the Vedas, that holds the entire universe in the small space or dahara akasha within the higher) heart center (or, if you like, simply "the heart"), that the Vedas say contains all time and the entire universe.

This, in turn (if you've given me enough rope that you've accepted the plausibility of all this so far) naturally leads us to a Consciousness (higher than any type of Mind) which would e.g. regard our past, present and future in one view, containing and not contained in them, not situated at a particular moment of Time for its point of looking (out or in, or both).

But now we've gotten inside of the Divine worlds, which may seem even more "far out" than the view up to this point, and also more paradoxical. So I'll stop at this point. I think that's more than enough hopefully mind-bending truth for now. And of course, I need hardly mention I do realize that the main thing anyway is to experience the glorious beauty of the soul and of the Divine and not worry too much about how exactly to describe exactly what it really is.

TraineeHuman

27th April 2022, 22:18

The soul naturally exists at a dimensional level higher than the mental, astral, and physical worlds. (And therefore, of course, it exists quite beyond what many might consider to be nearly all the qualities that make them the individual they currently are.) Accordingly, around the time of birth it takes on and then moulds a new mental body and new astral body to go with the physical body and the couple/family dynamic it has chosen to enter. Then, after physical death, these eventually will be discarded (after some years or (in the case of the mental body) usually after centuries). The soul, however, is timeless (that is, unless or until it chooses to merge into something higher).

Because the soul is also aware of higher realities that are found in realms beyond time and space, its choice of what particular body and situation to be born in will most certainly have a definite and detailed and ingenious overall purpose. An aware individual will usually have or develop a very general awareness of what that soul purpose is. However, some details of the soul's purpose may remain hidden throughout one's physical life, for a variety of reasons.

Also, for example, in infancy (and thereafter) the new human being will develop an ego, in an attempt to cope with the pressures of the limitations that the physical world and interactions with others exert. The infant's ego (and hence, later, that adult's ego) cannot tolerate total accord with another, because to the ego, that would be to lose its identity. Usually the only exception to this in infancy is with the infant's mother (but not all the time, either, even with her). Notice how this opposition to harmony is in complete conflict with the soul's (and the Spirit's) natural agenda. The soul is always seeking to create cooperation and concord wherever possible. The soul is continually well aware of the need for it to make concessions or even sacrifices to bring about the best outcome for both parties in the end.

The above are just some of the reasons why the great majority of people will mostly only hear/"see" the soul "through a glass, darkly". But we are all evolving spiritually, and so it's inevitable that in some lifetime or other, after sufficient inner development, the soul will at rare times temporarily take over or dominate the mind in a benevolent way. I have temporarily experienced this myself in various ways. At a very advanced stage, though, I know that this can become permanent and full-time. The soul can, so to speak, descend permanently into the mind and genuinely transform us into something operating at a higher level of wisdom. However, this is very rare (so far).

Unfortunately, there exists a "psychic readings" industry and various traditions of part-time mediumship where, today, we see a plethora of would-be oracles of the hidden truths about what is really going on in individuals' lives. Trouble is, though, only a smallish percentage of the individuals involved have truly and permanently raised the level of their mind to that of absorption by the higher mind.

Allow me to explain more about the soul's situation. The soul has probably experienced at the very least hundreds of past lifetimes on this planet, plus who knows how many more in how many other worlds/planets. It's profoundly wise. But apart from its messages in the dreams it generously and tirelessly gives you every night, the truth is it's a huge learning process for your soul to successfully communicate much of anything else to you -- unless you've truly taught yourself how to listen. Unfortunately, the great majority of people don't teach themselves that -- not that it's easy to do. The soul keeps trying, but ... well, no-one's listening at the other end. I'm sorry if this sounds insulting, but for the soul it's a little like a world-renowned professor trying to communicate with a child who hasn't learnt to talk much yet.

Fortunately, there are methods for fixing this. I've already talked in a previous post about how to listen to the "still small voice". The other methods I know of would all be "advanced practices", but I'll mention them now just in case. In this thread I've already mentioned getting genuine "downloads". Also there's getting "visions", which are like full-color broadscreen movies lasting at least for some minutes. Trouble is, because these are truly "advanced" phenomena, you'll need to do some super-good and advanced meditating or consciousness-uplifting and then just maybe they can happen, sometimes. A possibly somewhat less "advanced" version is to learn to cultivate spontaneous experiences of "inspiration". Many professionally creative people try to use this. You can, for example, ask the question you want information about (or put the problem which needs to be solved). Then you meditate, but you need to rise to a high level, of overflowing joy and bliss. Then, not long after the meditating, you tune in again to the bliss, and out will flow plenty of good, high-quality information straight from somewhere deep in your mind.

Another method I know of seems to come only with considerable advancement in meditation, so that you've already at least had some kind of experience of the Divine worlds. You become aware of how your "subconscious" sometimes actively makes itself known to the conscious mind, usually in a wordless way -- though actually it will be your subconscious PLUS the super-conscious, which is the soul. This means you're in some way mastering how to "let the subconscious (and the super-conscious) in". Then you'll find (or, at least, I've found) that at rare but crucial moments in your everyday life the soul will sometimes briefly take over the conscious for a few minutes, for example to prevent thoughts about any topic except one, so as to rather unsubtly steer your mind in exactly the right direction that it should be looking at.

TraineeHuman

2nd May 2022, 07:47

Johnnycomelately

2nd May 2022, 08:27

Ankle Biter

5th May 2022, 03:47

A few nights ago I 'woke' during a sleep. As I'm getting older this seems to be more rare but lately I've found myself becoming more attuned to an energy or frequency that seems to match a lot with others that profess to be empathic people.. granted that it would be mathematically highly improbable to not encounter this on a medium (interwebz) where like-minded individuals gravitate to and share stories... anyways my point being that a few nights ago, was feeling great, actually was feeling good all week only then for a sudden wave of weird energy to wash over me.. So I went to shut down all electronics and into a meditation before settling in for the night and get some quality sleeps to which at some point the waking up happened.

This experience was very very similar to one which happened in 2011.. when I found myself out of body I stayed slightly above my sleeping body in quiet contemplative conscientiousness and maintaining a subtle awareness of being simultaneously in my meat suit, outside of it, in the space of the room and in a astral space... I was recalling the sudden wave of shift in energy/frequ3ency that washed over me earlier in the evening.. something that has happened rather a lot of late and with increased frequency.. I won't delve into that too deeply because it's probably not the thread for it.. I dunno, we'll see.. as I was recalling this wave's onset I found myself thinking of further levels or planes that simultaneously overlap and how during this one experience in 2011 I broke through or tore through a 'fabric' to reveal another plane. In that experience it was with the intent to confront entities which is where my username/avatar comes from, entities that have hung around me since even from birth.

So again I 'tore' this fabric of reality and sure enough there was an ankle biter who paid me no attention until I was all up in its face then it did notice me with what felt like a mild annoyance and a bit of a bitch slap to throw me back out and then awaken from the sleep.. not the first time this has happened and in the past some of these interactions were less one sided and even went more to my own advantage.

At the time these experiences happened a lot in my earlier years I was quite deep into my meditation, exercises, minimalist lifestyle.. the more I moved away from that and into basically 3d earth 9-5 daily grind type of stuff it all basically stopped... I don't find that its any coincidence that for the last year and a bit I've freed myself of most of the distraction again and living as clean & healthily as I can, focusing more on deep meditation and growing in awareness of energy/frequency shifts maybe more OBEs?.. we'll have to see.

As for the encounter with this entity and their kind, I've always tried to keep an open mind that it's a projection of a deep suppressed trauma or internal issue unexplored, though that just doesn't sit right.. never did. I've lately been way more reliant on my intuition and 99.97% sure these energy parasites are exogenous in origin and very much way more active in our current but ever changing timelines.

Mashika

5th May 2022, 08:05

There is a recent thread on the Forum attempting to intellectually discuss the question of what is time (assuming that's a meaningful question, which strictly speaking I suggest it isn't, not quite, -- as I'll try to explain here "now").

Let's consider the findings of the great philosopher Kant (and by "great", I mean that in the world of Western philosophy, "modern" usually means "from Kant or after Kant"). He correctly observed that our mind's knowledge of what time it is always precedes, and pre-tags in advance, our mind's very act of perception of whatever event or object or circumstance we're looking at. Hence, it absolutely follows that time must be something that's altogether "in here" (in the human mind) and not "out there", despite what we may imagine. (However, it's also true that in a sense you could say our consciousness (which was lying "within") "expands outwards" for that moment, but not "outwards" in any sense of ceasing to be "within" us.)

So I agree with Kant (and Zen, and the Vedas, and so on): time isn't something we can ever know, or get to understand, by or through thinking, at all. In fact, all true knowledge (ultimately!) comes entirely through what we are, anyway. After all, you are (a) Spirit, or a soul, and nothing less. True knowledge is always a matter of realization. Yes, I know that word sounds almost like "creation of what's truly real". But all true knowledge, even of mundane things, is a matter of consciousness, and of the soul. The memory isn't what goes "click", any more than the movement of the clock hand is what constitutes time passing.

Hi Trainee. I get why you didn’t post this there, on Casey’s What is Time thread. You seem to have both no clue and no desire to learn about this topic, and your “...attempting to intellectually discuss...” smacks of something. Please get off your high horse and join the discussion over there.

There are good reasons to not take an "attempt to intellectually discuss" such topics, this goes beyond scope of that thread, it's like walking on your hands and then trying to run that way wondering why everything looks odd and you feel bad then your head turns blue after a while, it's just not the way sometimes

There are reasons, very good ones, to not attempt to go that way, not everything always has to follow specific roads or pre-understood paths on how to do things

If you always ask for someone to explain things to you, then you will never discover anything, you will always just know less than the person explaining things to you. And associated thoughts from that if you wish

Or in short, to not make this a thread derailing post much more than it already is:

If you always start your learning process from what someone else already considers an advanced path of discovery and documenting, then you are just following their steps, you don't know much more than that, even if the steps direct you to a deep fall in the end.

*Sometimes you have to throw away all you think you or others know and start from scratch, then you may discover some marvelous stuff, or not*

Anyway, here's an emoji that looks like a banana but turned out to be the moon :moon:

TraineeHuman

5th May 2022, 23:32

Yes, indeed, Ankle Biter, we all have sub-personalities, of different kinds and at different levels too. I would say that's why it's always important just where we "inwardly" put our consciousness, and not just drift along with the sub-personalities' "tide". We should ideally let our soul take the helm as much as we're able to do. It has great power and strength, but, for example, it lives in a "world" where everything is actually consciousness, and we should regard the "veils" that disguise that fact as "doorways" that indicate what aspects of the "realms" of matter it should apply its own power and force into at each moment. The soul is happy enough for us for now not to apply it into those areas. But it allows that only so that we can learn the lesson of consciously choosing the soul and eventually, one day, inviting it in always (let's hope).

There are different types of knowledge of the world, but the soul is the true "jack of all trades" and indeed is (and should one day be accepted as) "master of all of them". Very few individuals have found their true nature, but it's hidden somewhere deep inside all of us. People claim to yearn for "more", for something greater and more connected to others and with access to superior quality of experiences and knowledge. But it's all already there, waiting to be "felt" and for you to focus most of your attention on it instead of on what's not ultimately important. Be great. Be really something, and without needing to "prove" that you are. Most people are quite unaware that this inner greatness is just simply who they really are. They usually need to discover that this is really themself. They need to get fully interconnected with who they really are inwardly. The little sub-personalities are hanging around so much and creating great chaos only because they think the house has been vacated by its owner.

And like Mashika eloquently says in the previous post, only you can find your way to the inner you and all its greatness. Just trust your own "inner" nose. So simple!

TraineeHuman

9th May 2022, 03:32

Real understanding is something that's part of the fabric of you, at some deep level. It's not words words words. With that big disclaimer, let me say there does seem to be agreement among true mystics etc that the totality of reality/existence/being does exist as "the One without a second", and also that it resembles a formless but "infinite-directions" multi-process, which makes it quite unpindownable, and to a large degree undefinable. This is also of course what some call "God". There also seems to be considerable agreement (particularly among those individuals whose words about it are based on experience -- and yes, of course, we know that very many aspects of it can genuinely be experienced or interacted with), that it's an experience that it's indivisible, and also that it's in itself blissful by nature, and blissful to experience. It's also what philosophers call an Absolute, which basically means something that's quite real but infinite. It's also of course in many ways ultimately the only true "home" (as distinct from the smaller kinds of "home"), for everything that is. But wait, there's more. (That was like the commercial break, intended to give your brain cells a rest before the second paragraph starts, so that they don't overheat.)

Although this totality of reality/existence/being is intrinsically indivisible (and in many ways unsayable and certainly in many ways undefinable), we can single out certain aspects or spin-off phenomena, particularly when we look at its broadest relationships with itself. One of these is Consciousness. It uses Consciousness to look at aspects or parts of itself. And that happens whenever Consciousness acts. Notice I just said "whenever". This is, in fact, the primordial "when" here. This is where Time gets made in the first place -- by the Totality reaching out from its ultra-balanced primordial state and (rather than being just plain Being) narrowing itself down to (or "donning the suit of") Consciousness of some single aspect or part of itself. Notice, though, that from the Totality's point of view, acts of narrowing like this are all happening simultaneously -- because the Totality, by definition, never narrows itself. Only Consciousness does.

TraineeHuman

12th May 2022, 00:48

Early in this thread I made some brief observations about sub-personalities, but it's a huge topic. The reality is, life does continually demand us to respond, very often instantly or within at most a few days or weeks, to serve the survival and self-esteem and social prestige and inner learning needs (in us) and the requirements (by whoever or whatever is in our environment) in and for each situation we find ourselves in. Our sub-personalities are the strategic groupings or interminglings of thoughts, emotions, behaviours, actions, spiritual ideals or intuitions, and beliefs or working hypotheses by which "we" (well, the sub-personalities) carry out the task of coping (hopefully) well with life.

So we do have a number of distinct sub-personalities, each one supposedly appropriate (or, at any rate, used by us) for a certain type of situation or action. Our sub-personalities are themselves going through a kind of lifecycle and indeed even a reincarnation cycle (hopefully with lives shorter than our own) in us. They can come into existence in the present lifetime, or expand and refine themselves, and then at some future time in this or a future life they will fade away and "die" (or evolve and get "reborn" in us as a new, wiser or more effective sub-personality), but the soul will retain all the wisdom of experience that the sub-personality has taught it. Even within a single lifetime, the older we get, the more intelligent we become, at least in the sense of having developed more sophisticated and refined ways of dealing with our problems, and also not feeling as overwhelmed by them as when we were younger.

It's also true that everyone has certain "stuck" sub-personalities, which don't evolve like the other sub-personalities do. This is a very big deal. In this case, the individual is stuck in the past in whatever area(s) such sub-personalities cover. However, someone who engages in regular meditation or other active self-development work should eventually outgrow such stuckness, even though it may take some years or even longer. Freud placed great emphasis on attributing certain sub-personalities to certain ages. Thus, someone stuck at the stage of throwing tantrums to try to get their way would be attributed to be stuck at an emotional age of four or five, or possibly six. (And I would see advertising, for example, as a kind of sophisticated way of throwing a quick tantrum.) In a looser way I would agree with Freud that a great many individuals remain for many years at an emotional maturity level appropriate to somewhere in childhood or adolescence.

Most types of psychotherapy or personal growth work deal with attempting to in some way get the stuck sub-personalities unstuck at some level (or to at least begin to do so more). As I see it, when properly performed, meditation is a way of opening up the "gates" of your mind and heart to receiving whatever the soul has to communicate to you, and to staying true to the greatness of who and what you really are. As I've mentioned, though, we need to get used to just accepting whatever our soul is advising or showing us, but in our postmodern Western culture we don't listen to it enough. But at least we can try to hear more of what it's trying to say to (the "normal" level of consciousness of) us.

TraineeHuman

14th May 2022, 05:40

It's certainly useful for you to identify all your sub-personalities. That's because identification is the first step in understanding why they're there and what they really do. Such identification, accurately done, is already half the battle. The practice of mindfulness, which I assume most of us strive to practise continually (until the moments when we forget to) in ordinary daily life, does implicitly identify the particular sub-personalities at the fore in each moment. Maybe, though, that doesn't usually quite include identifying the sub-personalities' names (like: "rebel", "fatherlike protector", "innocent bystander", "covert influencer", "competent person regardless of the challenge", "person whose job it is to cry "Wolf", "workaholic", "martyr", "conciliator", "the average, very human, also-ran person", "the divinely appointed judge or expert", "person who's only pretending to want to be there", "nurturer", "person who keeps shooting themselves in the foot", "the addict, or fanatic", "the troubled, suffering, unhappy soul", "spoiled brat", "mother(er)", "sensualist", "team builder", and "compulsive helper or protector", to name only some of them).

One difficulty which many fail to avoid in discussions of spirituality is to admit and face that they tacitly imply there's only a thin thread of connection between the personal (as with the sub-personalities) on the one hand, and the cosmic on the other. That in itself is heavily laden with implicit inconsistencies and impossibilities. In the past, and even today in quite a few spiritual circles, that has rendered the evolutionary nature of spirituality to be almost non-existent, or a side-issue. However, as of the twentieth century particularly, spirituality has come to be recognised as being more and more centrally a matter of "personal growth", and even as involving real evolution occurring "in action" no less than the Darwinian variety is so in the biological sphere. This is why the centrality of the notion of a "soul", with one of its feet squarely in the Divine reality and the other foot planted right inside individual experiences and realizations and actions, is gigantically important and absolutely needed.

Part of the problem is that Reality transcends all models and all words and all categories. But our ultimate role as humanoid beings is to spiritualize even the density of matter. The task is a miraculous one, yet each of us is adding in our own contribution simply by living out the miracle of ever so slowly transforming "the water into wine", for lack of a better metaphor. Transforming the formerly (or supposedly) impossible into undeniable reality. What amazing creatures we actually must be.

TraineeHuman

21st May 2022, 06:57

I notice that Kim Gougen has recently made several videos about how to use one's energies and connect with Source and so on. (Incidentally, before I get to that, I had had some repeating dreams, that I couldn't shut off, for about three years in the recent past which I now suspect must have been about Kim. In those dreams, it seemed to me like she was somehow or in some sense a reincarnation of the Earth Godess (Gaia, or Kali, or whatever), coming back to (it seemed) very successfully restore some balance on the planet in some way. My dreams also identified her as being a distant cousin of mine. Kim says she is by inheritance the rightful czar of Russia. That would make her a descendant of Katherine the Great, whose racial ancestry was Prussian but also partly French, I believe. My mother was nine-sixteenths French royal line and three-sixteenths Prussian royal, which would mean Kim could be something like a third cousin of mine. Kim's maiden surname (Adams) was also the same as my mother's, being one of the few "in exile" surnames used by the descendants of the French royal line.)

In her first video on connecting with one's higher energies, Kim refers to the solar plexus energy center as "the heart". I admit it's quite true that the ordinary heart chakra merely acts as an amplifier of the energy ultimately coming from the solar plexus chakra. Also, Zen Buddhism and Taoism both stress to beginners that the solar plexus is the most central energy center and the center that accumulates the strongest physical life-energy (and in that sense can be said to be "the heart", as in the most central part).

On the other hand, as Yoga and Taoism and other schools stress, there is also a second heart center that everyone should eventually develop, and it's known as "the higher heart center". This is located behind the heart center, but still exactly midway between the right and left sides of the body. My higher heart center feels like it's virtually, but not quite, in the skin of my back. If someone is trying to cast me in a master-slave relationship with themselves supposedly as the dictatorial master (in matters of business, or employment, or my reputation, or partnership of any kind, or shared possessions or accommodation, and so on), I feel a massive pressure and discomfort in that part of my back. Fortunately I have some "psychic judo" skills by which I can so to speak "bounce" or "reflect" the oppressive energy back to its originator. Every experienced meditator should learn to master the use of psychic energy, though normally they should use it mostly to create strong balance within themselves, or to bring down the Force to achieve something very positive. But when it comes to the purely (psychically-)energetic side of anything to do with power or painting mental/emotional pictures for others (as professional performers do), not to mention successfully taking actions in the astral or higher worlds, the higher heart's energies need to be brought into play.

Nevertheless, I do like the way Kim emphasizes getting a direct connection all the way from one's solar plexus to Source, even if I would also protest that it's really to the oversoul above one's head and thence to Source.

TraineeHuman

6th June 2022, 02:00

The soul (or call it "the super-conscious ability or "mind" or "intelligence" in us) doesn't itself really have an "off" switch at all, so to speak. You may not know that Beethoven and Mozart, for example, used to say they wrote their entire works by direct "dictation" bar by bar, coming direct from something inside themselves that actually wrote their works in first but also final draft form. No corrections. Back then they didn't have white-out, so it was necessary for composers to get things perfectly right on the first attempt.

The question then is, why do nearly all of us (except kids up to the age of six or seven!) habitually keep attention to their hearing the soul's "voice" switched off? (So then, during the day, the soul doesn't ever give up on sending us little messages all the time every day, but we just never ever listen (not during the day), and then also we've quite forgotten that the inner truth always comes in a super-poetic type of language and symbolism.) What does our reptilian-controlled society and school system, and hence we, have against the peaceful simplicity of genuine (unpretentious) perfection, and how come we get taught that to "grow up" means to continually switch off the stream of consciousness of our "imagination"? Why do we utterly forget that our dreams at night are the purest and wisest form of truth (and honesty) by far that there is? Why do we lose the ability to keep that connected to the truth inside us, and instead come to pollute it with misleading fantasy?

The first step in recovery will often necessarily be you learning to slow your thinking down. Of course, this is something every meditator does (or learns to do) during the first five minutes or so of a meditation session. At such a point you'll then notice your mind probably goes into what of course seems at first to you to be a kind of idle state. Somehow, at this point, you ideally need to start tapping wordlessly into what you directly know (or directly "feel" intuitively), regardless of how weird this may seem to the super-"educated" mind the system has tried to install at the expense of repressing everything else.

Imagination is super-fun. (Why did you forget that? What happened to "playing"? You have to practise freeing your imagination from its shackles again. Let it run wild. It isn't crazy by nature, but it may be feeling crazy at first because it's been so locked up. In early high school I had two art teachers, because our family moved and so I attended two different schools in the same year. At both schools, the art teacher told me that I had a very strong sense of color, and that it was miles stronger than that of any of my classmates (and that was because I used my color sense imaginatively). (On the other hand, my natural style was abstract expressionist, and both teachers told me, silly "trained" experts as they were, that I would need to be a high school graduate plus an art school graduate too before I could be allowed to follow my natural style of abstract expressionism. Silly teachers. Even they too had "learnt" that the soul must be trained to wear blinkers. To quote T.S. Eliot if I may be so bold: "I did not know that death had undone so many.")

TraineeHuman

26th June 2022, 04:46

Further to the comments in post #2861, let's look at the question Ulysses is asked before he first sets out on his whole epic journey: "Who will be the hero of your life?" The soul, our own soul, the true us, is totally meant to be that hero for us, always. The soul has the full solutions that we need, always. But as Ulysses' questioner implies, there's a huge danger that we won't always step up to the plate fully enough and live such an inspired life. And we'll do that simply because life in this world does so frequently let us down.

Under the spell of our disappointment, we won't listen to what our soul is trying to tell us. But our soul is altogether divine in nature. It can create the perfect answer, the perfect way to go on. This is our birthright. We need to somehow not lose sight of its wonderful light. Our problems and our chaos and our allowing ourselves to be steamrolled by our own suffering (if indeed that's what happens in our case) all require genuine and complete solutions. We can find such solutions by using soul qualities such as great curiosity and exceptional courage, and a beginner's mind that happily ventures into the unimaginable. Those solutions to the problems of our living will come in some form or other, always. That's how the universe works. The only question is, will we have truly refused to be defeated or "castrated" by the problems, and will we have outshone the possibility of any emotional suffering? Or will we have abdicated from being the one who was the hero in that area of our lives?

We were meant to walk hand in hand with our soul every day, to feel the link every day (to the Divine, if you like). Then, on feeling that link, to listen to (or at least know in some perhaps vague sense) what the message from the Divine is, that our soul is trying to pass onto you individually.

TraineeHuman

10th July 2022, 23:04

It's more accurate to say that the soul or Higher Self isn't something separate from you, but, rather, it's the true you, the truer you, and kind of hidden, at a certain deeper level. For everyday practical purposes you may not engage the soul. But why not "humor" it at all times? It's always there to show you the pathway to in the end being able to experience (ultimately) bliss, or deep peace, in the particular situation an circumstances you're in. Very often, though, what the soul is pointing towards will seem like nothing more than a test of character, a (tough) challenge for you to show how capable or strong or brave or inventive you are. But, taking that challenge is what real living is properly all about, surely.

It's not really that the soul is a tough taskmaster, actually, when you get right down to it. Rather, the physical world we live in (certainly on this planet at least) is at almost every major turn a very, very challenging place if we truly face up to it. Being the true us, our soul is in reality our best friend -- you know, that friend who's not afraid to tell it (or show it) like it is, yet remains totally on your side.

Shamz

12th July 2022, 04:36

Hello - Can you elaborate on when you wrote " our reptilian controlled society and school system"?

I heard/read lot about reptilians and all - but want to know your understanding/views about it?

TraineeHuman

13th July 2022, 00:47

I guess I've seen a small number of reptilians in the astral at some time or other, but I'm certainly no expert on them. Some people (like Kim Goguen or Alex Collier) apparently know various details of how reptilians have covertly dominated humanity on Earth, so all I can do is mostly rely on what those people say. Some of the reptilians I've come across in the astral certainly appeared to be very benign, actually, though I guess you might ask were they trying to manipulate?

I guess I believe that too much of what goes on in our society seems to be dominated by greed and even, it seems, by institutionalized greed, and by self-interest at the expense of others. (Greed is generally not good, at all.) OK, on the other hand there's still a firm recognition in the more affluent countries that the ideal is some kind of fusion of capitalism and socialism, at least economically speaking. The "socialism" part, such as social security payments like pensions and unemployment benefits, at least places less urgency on the need for "survival at all costs (and putting everything else on hold if necessary)". I assume that or at least something like social benefits and public centers or facilities will continue in the future.

When it comes to economics, I'm no expert anyway. But look at the kinds of things that commentators like, for example, Catherine Austin Fitts seem to keep exposing, and there always seems to be something new and more dire. I guess it seems that too many of those in power apparently haven't learnt much about how to outgrow that stuff. I guess that stuff is, precisely, coming out of the reptilian part of the brains of humans, mostly?

When I was four my grandmother in Lithuania sent me a book (in Lithuanian) with a story about how a single very brave person, armed only with a very reliable sword, fights off and kills flying dragons who are trying to attack him. It was the first book I ever read, and at that age I found the story exhiliratingly exciting. At first there's only one dragon, but then there are many, and then most of them breathe fire, and have multiple heads. But the person with the sword somehow wins and kills them all, because he's brave enough to face them all and not feel defeated by them at any point. At as young an age as I was, though, a child assumes that most of the details of a story are a description of something factual, something that really happened.

I do certainly think that some humans who are wealthy or who have power, in society or in a large company or government organisation, or a self-help motivational type of organisation, do seem to me to have a quantity of extra reptilian in their genes somewhere. That happens too often. Those individuals are always con artists. The dragons like gold, very much. And to transfer plenty of what's in your wallet over to theirs, if they're some self-development guru they use the always still unfulfilled promise of gold (or of psychological/spiritual freedom) for you too.

TraineeHuman

18th July 2022, 09:25

The One is everywhere and in all and also in a sense beyond all.
On the other hand, the soul is by its nature dedicated to seeking out what is the truth and rejecting what is false (or partial, or a form of limitation or self-division), at all levels but of course including, to a degree, even quite mundane levels that are part of our daily living. The soul never stops doing this as best it can. In this way, the soul is continually linking together and reconciling what were partial views or understandings of reality or of the ultimate truth. However, throughout all this the soul is itself caught up in a partial or limited understanding at each point, even though it's at each stage forming a synthesis of all the truth it's gathered so far.

Thank goodness the soul is so absolutely determined to do this, though. Because at every point it can't help but reject its own view, gained from its progress so far, as ignorance, and inadequate, and only partial. That is what keeps propelling it to go further and try to find the real, fullest truth, and not be willing to rest until it does so (if it ever does). And that is also what makes the soul finer and ever finer as we grow older. Along the way, though, in the early years of our lives the soul (initially, in a kind of self-defense) firmly rejects certain understandings or viewpoints as not being its own. That refusal to face and assimilate certain experiences one has had as being "truly me" or "truly mine" is exactly what creates the ego, as I understand it. And yes, the soul does create and build the ego, particularly early in our lives. But it also kills ego off as it comes to recognize that some parts of the ego are not the truth.

TraineeHuman

15th September 2022, 22:53

How does mindfulness work?
==========================

.Mindfulness is, among other things,a (gradual but extremely effective) cure for depression, or more generally, a cure even for not feeling happy.
Professional psychotherapy fully recognizes this, these days.
.Mindfulness is meditation-in-action, any place, any time. The meeting of the two worlds. Right now I'd like you all to pause to do one particular type
of mindfulness known as grounding. Here is a form of grounding that can be done without even moving other than to place one hand over our solar plexus
(as was described in an early post on this thread -- sorry, I haven't found the post number as yet) with the thumb "hooked into" your belly button and h
e other fingers flat, and in contact with your belly), and you continue this for at least a few minutes.

.Mindfulness is also a means of bringing back inside us what we have forgotten or lost. It could be called "remind-fulness."
.It's a form of meditation while you are (also) being busy in some active way. I guess this is along the lines of making the mountain (i.e. the soul's
eyeview) come to Mahommed even when Mahommed is too busy (or just taking a break) in the everyday world or the marketplace.

.Now let's consider why mindfulness works -- why it uplifts us. There's that famous Vietnamese teacher who claims to sum up what mindfulness is by saying:
"When you wash the dishes, just wash the dishes." Yes, perfectly correct. But I suggest that's also a bit misleading, put like that. What he's REALLY saying
is: "Wash the dishes and be one-pointed while you do." You can think of this as meaning that you have your attention going in two directions at once.
There's a direction or "arrow" going in, to the deeper inside of you; and there's a direction or "arrow" going out, to the dishes and what you do with them.
Like this:

the dishes
^
|
|

you
|
|
v
your soul, within you

When I say hold your attention both out and also simultaneously on whatever is within, notice now that this ombines those two, outside and within, together, temporarily. Both the "in" and the "out" arrow combined together.

In my next post I'll draw some conclusions from this, though I'd like to give you the space to ponder it a little before I do so.

TraineeHuman

17th September 2022, 21:34

onevoice

18th September 2022, 04:15

In the previous post we saw how mindfulness involves both an "out" direction, into greater expansion, and an "inwards" direction, into something smaller and possibly even microscopic or even beyond that. It seems clear to me that in Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) was referring to something like the "out" and "in" arrows. Obviously, of the potions that are available for Alice to drink, one does make her smaller and the other makes her larger. I consider that this is one issue Dodgson does implicitly explore a little in both Alice in Wonderland and in Through the Looking Glass [a mirror or magnifying glass being what we use to see reality more clearly). I believe that in his choice of symbolism, Dodgson was implicitly considering certain issues regarding how to integrate or combine the two views.

Alice, by being mindful, was bigger than the individuals or figures in her environment. In the practice of mindfulness, you hold your attention both out and inwards simultaneously. Because you're holding your attention in these two ways simultaneously, your attention becomes rather like a fork handle, let's say. The handle is holding two prongs inseparably together, and as if they were solidly glued together. That is interesting because it it shows clearly that 'you" are not just that fork handle but instead, during this experience at least, you're as big (or your attention is as big) as the whole kaboodle. And that what is part of "you" and at least temporarily "yours" actually extends well beyond the boundaries of your skin. I guess we've heard this before, but my point is that the mere practice of mindfulness reconfirms it, in an active way. "You" are actually gigantic, and bigger than the sum total of everything you experience. And if you throw in the proposition that "the kingdom of heaven (or God) is entirely within you, then you and your soul must be very vast indeed.

We also see then that no problem of daily living, being something that's finite and limited, can ever be as "big" in impact as you actually are. Really, it should be no match for you as long as you remain true to the brilliant who/what you actually are. Easier said than done, of course, but true nevertheless.

Thank you for this excellent way of practicing mindfulness. In the Mahayana Buddhist style of meditation, we do practice mindfulness in certain style of meditation similar to what you describe. In most of the rudimentary Buddhist meditation techniques, one focuses one's mind on one simple action of our bodily activity. In a very advanced meditation technique my late Buddhist master calls "Silent Illumination", one first relax and still one's mind so that one has no wandering thoughts. Even when we experience that there are no wandering thoughts, there maybe subtle mental disturbances that one is not aware of. This is similar to when the winds dies down over a lake and the lakes becomes still and tranquil and its still water can reflect the surrounding environment like a mirror. Also an example is often used where our mind is often like a muddy water, and if left alone without outside influences, the muddy water can become clear and the bottom of a pond can be seen. After the mind has calmed sufficiently, then we "illuminate" our mind by slowly expanding the scope of our awareness from let's say regions of the body, to whole body, and then beyond the body to the immediate locality, etc and beyond to include entire reality. There is no focus applied, simply pure expanding awareness that can be similar to ever expanding intensity of illumination that slowly reveal more and more of a locality that was initially dark. It takes long time to slowly train our egoic consciousness to let go of our tendency to operate in constant self-referentiality mode to be more mindful.

Many years ago, I attended a 21-day Theravada Buddhism meditation retreat where the primary method of meditation was mindfulness of all the activities we do, both during meditation as well as every other activities. The Theravada Buddhism is the oldest branch that most closely follows the original teachings of the historical Buddha and is typically practiced in the Far Eastern countries such as Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, etc. The temple Abbot instructed us to be mindful of all ordinary daily activities and see how each activities such as walking, doing chores, breathing, chewing food, etc. interacts with our consciousness. Being mindful of body and one's ordinary activities really helped to calm our mind and facilitated going to deeper meditative states during meditation sessions. During the meditative periods, everyone alternated between 1 hour of sitting meditation and 1 hour of walking meditation so both active and passive activities are balanced.

TraineeHuman

18th September 2022, 04:31

Thank you, onevoice. I very much enjoyed your explanation of how the "muddy water" can still itself completely by the soul making itself very still, in imitation of a very still physical environment. The outer and the inner reflecting each other and following the lead of each other. Very nice.

Johnnycomelately

18th September 2022, 08:00

Hi Trainee, and hi onevoice. I want to advise caution about leaning too heavily toward the older disciplines such as Buddhism. In my understanding (opinion), they are, in whole, no longer valid as effective plans/algorithms for getting back to ‘perfection’/‘Heaven’. The tell is in the hierarchy.

I think we are past the times when those ways made sense. Now we can each make our way ‘back home’ on our own in each of our own series of days, if we take what our days show us about ourselves earnestly. ... One cool trick is to notice the words/expressions that pop up in response to problems, in our own personal language, and to work with whatever symbolism that evokes regarding soul imperatives. Clear your heart, hope for meaning, and trust your growing self.

Thank you, onevoice. I very much enjoyed your explanation of how the "muddy water" can still itself completely by the soul making itself very still, in imitation of a very still physical environment. The outer and the inner reflecting each other and following the lead of each other. Very nice.

TraineeHuman

19th September 2022, 02:30

So, it would seem to me, Johnnycomelately, that to make such authoritative and sweeping comments you must have truly vast and intensive personal experience and accurately detailed knowledge of what the many varieties of ancient spiritual traditions all have to offer. That alone is very impressive. Because otherwise, of course, you wouldn't be qualified to inform everyone so confidently that the time of any and all of the above is past, so that all the ashrams and monasteries and dojos and temples and so on and so forth should now presumably be informed that they need to close. Because their time is now altogether past, thanks to your wise information. I guess you would also have, for one example among many, a way that the Zen Buddhist monks, who as a matter of fact currently have the longest average life expectancy of any known occupational group, could live even longer.

I have to bow also to the vast depth and extent and flexibility of both philosophical and psychological insight and knowledge, as well as sociological/historical insight you must have -- not to mention the variety and also the depth of the most profound spiritual experiences and encounters and downloads you've had, too -- without which, of course, it would be quite impossible to accurately assess so many traditions. Wow.

But aside from the "traditional" vs "contemporary" labeling, mindfulness is the same thing as "being awake" in a profound sense. And that is a central issue in many discourses both ancient (such as Jesus' parable of The Nightwatchman, among others) and more modern (such as in Gurdjieff's notion of being "awake" and "remembering").

Johnnycomelately

20th September 2022, 03:51

Well it does no harm to get up on your hind legs once in a while.

Lemme see.

The tell is in the hierarchy.

I used one of the proper PA disclaimers, “opinion”, and (I) note that my statement has been interpreted as though I think all of your work is useless. Person, I don’t mean that. I am saying what I think the way forward is. Every strength is and remains a strength, but, every binding MUST be broken. And hierarchies are built on bonds.

Buddhism gave me reincarnation — the idea of — way before I found it in Christian teachings. Almost embarrassed to say, ‘Lobsang Rampa’. And a bunch of other good ideas there too.

What you affirm about becoming clear, as a muddy puddle will do in time, I read in Lao Tzu’s book (the Tao te Ching?) several years after the above. The wisdom won and told by the olds is true and will last, but the ‘necessity’ of hierarchy has IMO been negated. That is all I am saying, tho it is a hearty gust of breath upon, seems clear to me, houses of cards. The kicker, for me, was observing some kind of Buddhist teacher/monk going on about revered betters/masters in the near-spirit domain, in a lesson at McLeod Gange in ‘95. A legit Tibetan Buddhist, a few miles from ~Daram Sala, no doubt backed by the top Lama.

OK, are we fine now, we can each go about our ways in peace? I think so.

Peace.

So, it would seem to me, Johnnycomelately, that to make such authoritative and sweeping comments you must have truly vast and intensive personal experience and accurately detailed knowledge of what the many varieties of ancient spiritual traditions all have to offer. That alone is very impressive. Because otherwise, of course, you wouldn't be qualified to inform everyone so confidently that the time of any and all of the above is past, so that all the ashrams and monasteries and dojos and temples and so on and so forth should now presumably be informed that they need to close. Because their time is now altogether past, thanks to your wise information. I guess you would also have, for one example among many, a way that the Zen Buddhist monks, who as a matter of fact currently have the longest average life expectancy of any known occupational group, could live even longer.

I have to bow also to the vast depth and extent and flexibility of both philosophical and psychological insight and knowledge, as well as sociological/historical insight you must have -- not to mention the variety and also the depth of the most profound spiritual experiences and encounters and downloads you've had, too -- without which, of course, it would be quite impossible to accurately assess so many traditions. Wow.

But aside from the "traditional" vs "contemporary" labeling, mindfulness is the same thing as "being awake" in a profound sense. And that is a central issue in many discourses both ancient (such as Jesus' parable of The Nightwatchman, among others) and more modern (such as in Gurdjieff's notion of being "awake" and "remembering").

TraineeHuman

20th September 2022, 06:16

Yes, I do believe that where it counts most, you and I are close to ultimately being in agreement after all.

We all have to always follow our own nose. Even when we decide we have to go against what our own nose has been telling us, that change of direction is itself all coming from our own nose.

This fact sometimes leaves us all in a delicate and paradoxical situation. Only the nose knows when to overrule itself -- and also when not to do so.

One example of this dilemma that I have had to live with has been that I somehow knew since childhood that I had a serious undiagnosed disease, but it wasn't diagnosed until I was 65. Moreover, it's quite rare for anyone not to die of this particular type of heart disease in their 30s, 40s or 50s, or earlier, or to ever get diagnosed. But here I am, still going OK at 72. My nose told me. But how did it know it would be OK that I was to be overweight for the first 40 years of my life? How did my nose know not to worry so much about certain issues like that but not certain others? But yes to worry about certain other things, making me a kind of health nut for over half my life?

The dilemma of the nose, or what many call "free will", or also when to trust ourselves versus authorities/ apparent facts etc. Almost never enough facts available to give a definitive answer, yet in every situation we must roll the dice.

TraineeHuman

22nd September 2022, 21:48

Some might perhaps not like my saying this, but there are such things as higher levels of power and effectiveness and stillness with which one may come to eventually practise or live in mindfulness. Such higher levels of intensity and expansion and power all come at a price, of course. That price is your sincere surrender, i.e. your being fully and more constantly and sincerely open to receiving it and being guided into meeting and mastering that greater intensity and those higher powers (remember "the Force"?), no less -- and also your being more fully open to being deeply aware of just simply being, and of how wonderful that truly is. Plus more ready to accept all the challenges that come "in plain clothes". Surrender and don't be so proud.

In the spiritual life one goes through various stages and tests. Eventually one may pass beyond a certain set of stages and leave all that behind. But there will always be a different set of stages still waiting for you to undergo and pass through. But to see these, you need to continue to be on the lookout for (mindful of) inner realization that is higher than what you have so far attained. Life will always hand you these new challenges, but of course you need to recognize how valuable they are. We all have whole worlds of many different sorts to conquer (inwardly), if only we can recognize their presence. There are many planes of reality, if only we can be aware of them. Just how wide and infinite and omnipresent and open is your consciousness? How much are you willing to give, or bear, "in exchange", and for how long?

Also, problems, or difficulties, arise at every level. First you have to conquer them in yourself, and mindfulness helps here, as you always need to put aside whatever is in the way of your feeling the calm of mindfulness.

TraineeHuman

25th September 2022, 03:50

There is the fundamentalist Christian notion that one can become "born again." Such rebirth may indeed involve a greater activation of, and protection and inspiration from, the soul. Unfortunately, however, Christian fundamentalists quite often seem to lack an adequately developed capacity to be ruthlessly critical regarding all ideas and opinions. At this Forum, or if one has had a very good tertiary education, such a ruthlessness of aspiration to find the real truth and not settle for anything less will hopefully be well established. My initial point, though, is that it's absolutely necessary. This is because the soul brings up many wonderful ideals, but it takes tough critical analysis to be able to see to what extent, and how, such ideals can be realized in one's life.

This is also why the soul is so calm and in a sense detached. It has to be, because the mental baggage you have collected as part of your own identity and conditioning will initially get all entangled with what the soul is actually saying. That's one more good reason why it's useful to practise mindfulness, where as far as you can you concentrate on listening only to what the soul is saying.

Ernie Nemeth

25th September 2022, 16:00

This is my most recent interchange with those 'higher forces'.

Rest easy, little Ernie, and listen. Hear with your heart, the words we will speak.
Life is a river, and it flows through your reality in a steady stream.
You are an extension of that life. A point of extreme narrow focus.
This locus of awareness that is your center flows along the river.

You ask, 'Where is God And why has He forsaken you?'

How foolish a question, to which you know the answer.

Yet we will play along, since that is what you want.

You have heard it said that God is not of this world, and that is true. But no one claims God is not present. God is the focus and the reality of life. God is the river, the flow, and the extension of life.

Other realities will present themselves to you in due course, for the river of life does not stop at the borders of your world. But amongst them all, it is this world you visit the most. It is this world that holds your rapt attention.

This brief bittersweet life is your favorite. Yet each time you forget that fact and again lament the absence of God. It is for that very experience that you come here over and over again. But I will not ruin it for you. For the best part of this life is yet to come.

Everything you encounter on this plane of existence is a reminder of your magnificence, if only you would accept their reality instead of imposing your own upon them.

God resides within. So deep is the connection that most never delve deep enough to find it within themselves. Instead they seek it in others and call it love.

It is the spark of wonder in the eyes of the other. You've seen it and acknowledged it many times. It is the namaste of life, when recognized.

Little Ernie, your life is a journey that never ends. It is the Creator's joy to confer this to you. It is a sacred pact, an ancient pact that can never be broken, for it defines not only you but your Creator as well.

So rejoice, little Ernie, your life is a gift that keeps on giving without fail, forever and ever more!

The wonder of it is Our everlasting Joy!

One final piece of advice, to put it succinctly:
Keep your head out of your ass...
It always seems ****ty from that perspective.

Remember?"

TraineeHuman

25th September 2022, 22:29

Good stuff, Ernie. Delightfully sincere, as you always seem to be.

I'm reminded of how Alan Watts liked to say that what we really are is God playing hide-and-seek with this world. The idea being, partly, that there's something that's more fun and more interesting than knowing everything. And that's the situation where we never fully know everything that's happening to us at any moment. I think that Watts would have said somewhere that that's also the situation God is in -- not being "all-knowing", because many foundational features of reality itself aren't fixed or final. So, then, God would be letting us in on God's own game, but then ultimately in some deep sense we are God anyway.

I've always been fascinated by how not-knowing isn't necessarily a passive activity at all. You can decide you'll temporarily not-know about something or other, and that will then give you direct access to its background, its context. Krishnamurti emphasizes the great importance of not-knowing about thought, about making use of not-knowing (or simply admitting that you truly don't know the answer to some major question about your life or whatever). That takes you beyond the realm of thought, of thinking, and so not-knowing changes into a way of greater or deeper knowing, so to speak. Very, very important, and fruitful in pointing the way to the realms of reality that are beyond the mental.

TraineeHuman

27th September 2022, 22:57

To my mind, Ernie's latest post raised issues about what not-knowing really means. You'll notice, though, that saying: "When you wash the dishes, just wash the dishes" is also, on the surface, about not-knowing about anything except the dishes. So, there's clearly a connection here which I'd like to explore.

To begin with, though, I believe we need to consider the question of what is consciousness. (There are also connexions with mindfulness, from the fact that mindfulness in itself is really one major way of pursuing freedom from unhappiness. But I'll leave that aside for now.)

The Western conception of consciousness goes something like this. Our consciousness is something that merely happens inside ourselves, and not outside of us. We develop a consciousness about someone or something through our memories of experiences of encountering it or them, until we reach a point where we're confident we have a kind of draft "picture" of who or what they may be like. That picture is then the foundation of our consciousness regarding them of it.

That's the Western approach. But the ancient Eastern understanding of consciousness goes something like this. Consciousness -- as distinct from the inert, dead matter that Western thought emphasizes -- is latently everywhere, and is the "stuff" out of which all reality is made, ultimately. Consciousness is already all fired up and ready for powerful action, and full of wisdom and power and understanding and so on. And through stillness, through not-knowing about anything, we start to tap into something that is quietly very dynamic and the source of all life and existence. Instead of drawing a blank through the supposed "nothing" of stillness, we start to tap into everythingness -- into the intensity of the breath of God, if you like. So, then, concentrating on just washing the dishes makes space for the everythingness to come in and quietly fill -- well, "your" consciousness, or, rather, to at least begin to merge your consciousness with the universal consciousness.

Both the West and the East traditionally see (their version of) consciousness as, among other things, a way, even *the* primary way, to gain knowledge about the things that matter. And I'm not denying that knowledge is important too. But the Eastern view also appreciates the importance and usefulness of the judicious use of not-knowing when that is fruitful. Notice also that the Western notion of consciousness is of something much more limited than the ancient Eastern. Hence there must be many things which the Western consciousness doesn't know but the Eastern may claim to know.

Remember how in a recent post I explained how in mindfulness there are two directions or "arrows" of knowing or seeing. And how,at least according to me, the two directions are experienced simultaneously. This doesn't jibe at all with the Western outlook, though. Although Western psychologists use mindfulness as the best general cure for depression, they would insist that you can't have a coherent view from a telescope at the same time as, and combined with, one from a microscope. What can I say? The human consciousness can do wonderful things, some of which evidently defy the rules of science and logic as we know them (in the West). Some phenomena, i would say, are too huge and integrated to be able to be fully unravelled and chopped up and remain intact. Kind of reminds me of the title of an obscure American musical from some decades ago: "Yo' hands too short to box with God".

TraineeHuman

28th September 2022, 23:46

I feel a need to talk in (at least) slightly greater depth about one or two of the ingredients that can actually go into mindfulness when it's practised at an advanced level. Let's start with silence. In the West, silence has always been considered to be something passive. But there are somewhat (at least) meditative-style states where it becomes undeniably clear that through silence one is tapping into something that's a whole other, higher realm of reality, and very dynamic and "full". You need to go there, somehow. If you like, you could think of it as almost rather like an alternative universe/world rather like some world that Captain Kirk wanders into in a Star Trek episode. The amazing thing about it is that such a world can be and is a world of everythingness (as distinct from "nothingness", as we would think). And all in extraordinarily perfect balance and cohesion and greatness of power and of perspective, rather than a world that's just a vacuum (not that such a thing as a vacuum "world" even exists.) In that world, everything seems timeless, making all the concerns of our world of transient forms seem petty and feeble and insignificant. That world is also what I would consider the world of, or the entrance to, true "enlightenment".

One simple way you can begin to feel that world of the great silence is through mastering the art of grounding yourself and just taking it further and further. Let me explain. At some point in your practice of grounding yourself, e.g. by hooking the thumb of your flat hand over your belly button, you'll begin to feel electromagnetism of some kind flowing in and out of your belly button and solar plexus generally. Such grounding should enable you, after much practice, eventually to palpably feel yourself actually standing back energetically from your own thinking. Continuing along the same path, you can eventually learn to also stand back from feeling and sensing altogether, and watch your own inner movements from the viewpoint of an entirely pure, uninvolved, impartial consciousness. At this point you go a step (a leap) further and simply withdraw your consciousness from "your" involvement in thoughts, feelings and sensations. You'll notice that your consciousness doesn't diminish in the process, but actually increases in clarity, intensity, sharpness, happiness, and even power. In other words, you can find that from that completely detached, silent and inherently safe inner position, you can study your own inner movements with far higher levels of precision and detail than is possible through ordinary introspection, and that you can learn to modify the workings of your mind and heart in ways that are completely inconceivable from the ordinary waking states of consciousness.

There's a whole world, a universe, brimful with unexplored inner knowledge there just waiting for you to explore it, some day, somehow, in some form of soul existence. But it takes huge amounts of "inner work", and of psychotherapy in some sense of that word, before you can access the treasure house of inner knowledge. But haven't you had enough of the confusion -- of the "fog" or boredom of your meditation -- which is really just the clutter in your subconscious mind that just hasn't been cleaned up yet.

You need to seriously master stillness, I'm afraid. Because otherwise, how can you master, or accurately know that you have, true "self-knowledge"? What would that even mean? (Against what background could you hold or mirror it?)

TraineeHuman

30th September 2022, 02:30

In mindfulness, the "arrow" going out is all about integrating the individual with universal (and transcendent) existence in oneness and in boundless things such as bliss.

Notice also that there are things which the two arrows (both "out" and "in") seek to exclude. For instance, they exclude all (automatic) behaviour, of the conditioned mind, including all its attitudes and beliefs and reflex emotions and memories, and (going "in") all the products of these. This is the "freshness" side of mindfulness, its seeing of everything as fresh and untouched, an awareness as if everything is being seen for the first time ever. Consciousness is in itself always fresh, but we don't always realize how much this is so until we practise mindfulness or some other form of meditation or active awareness.

Everything excluded by the two arrows, though, is, effectively, expansively and slowly, being transformed in the process of mindfulness.

The ancient Eastern teachings claim that mindfulness, and meditation generally, allows us to experience awareness and energy generally, rising out of our subconscious and also out of the superconscious (which is the soul). Hence we have ever fresh insights into the mechanisms and structures lying behind, or for now controlling, our thoughts and emotions and behaviours.

TraineeHuman

30th September 2022, 07:50

Following on from post #2892, here's more on the profound importance of mastering silence (which of course is not "nothing" in the mundane Western sense):

According to Sri Aurobindo: "It is not possible to make a foundation in Yoga [i.e., spiritual practise] if the mind is restless." Again in the words of Sri Aurobindo, "A mind that has achieved [true] calmness can begin to act, even intensely and powerfully, but it will keep its fundamental stillness [at all times]."

Furthermore, someone else writes: "In Vedic culture so-called “Mindfulness” occupies the central place as a holistic approach towards accomplishing oneness of the Atman with the Brahman. As per Buddhism, Mindfulness (i.e. Sati) is not present in every state of mind, but needs to be brought into being instead. As soon as Sati is brought into an individual’s being [fully and totally], through various methods, (s}he becomes Bodhisatva and reaches Nirvana, thus achieving the goal of absolute enlightenment."

Just thought I'd pass that on. Raises the question of how well do you truly know and have masterful understanding and knowledge of the world of true silence, and of how deeply it's actually entangled with all of reality everywhere?

TraineeHuman

30th September 2022, 22:55

It seems to me that one major reason why the nature and importance of the world of silence is misunderstood and underestimated
is because people are ignorant about how vast and real and omnipresent and varied consciousness is. Hopefully the following video can fill in many of these gaps.

FUB6NybGDWw

Johnnycomelately

1st October 2022, 00:08

My internet is too slow right now to watch vids, will look later.

To your intro, I humbly add that the Mineral Kingdom, from the stones and earth within my sight to the whole of our Earth home including the Sun and all the workings of this solar system, are to me conscious.

Daily, before I turn in, I give it/them (most strongly to the Sun) my appreciation and best wishes, for the sake of (planetary-scale) ‘physical’ peace. This after talking to the Plant and the Animal kingdoms, and before hoping for peace for our kingdom of the Children on Earth and on far world-homes.

It seems to me that one major reason why the nature and importance of the world of silence is misunderstood and underestimated
is because people are ignorant about how vast and real and omnipresent and varied consciousness is. Hopefully the following video can fill in many of these gaps.

FUB6NybGDWw

TraineeHuman

1st October 2022, 06:17

For anyone who can't access the video, here are a few quotes to get started.

Sri Aurobindo on Consciousness

Consciousness is a fundamental thing, the fundamental thing in existence it is the energy, the motion, the movement of consciousness that creates the universe and all that is in it not only the macrocosm but the microcosm is nothing but consciousness arranging itself. For instance, when consciousness in its movement or rather a certain stress of movement forgets itself in the action it becomes an apparently unconscious” energy; when it forgets itself in the form it becomes the electron, the atom, the material object. In reality it is still consciousness that works in the energy and determines the form and the evolution of form. When it wants to liberate itself, slowly, evolutionarily, out of Matter, but still in the form, it emerges as life, as animal, as man and it can go on evolving itself still farther out of its involution and become something more than mere man.

-- Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, pp. 236-7.

Consciousness is usually identified with mind, but mental consciousness is only the human range which no more exhausts all the possible ranges of consciousness than human sight exhausts all the gradations of colour or human hearing all the gradations of sound — for there is much above or below that is to man invisible and inaudible. So there are ranges of consciousness above and below the human range, with which the normal human [consciousness] has no contact and they seem to it unconscious....

-- Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p.233.

Our physical organism no more causes or explains thought and consciousness than the construction of an engine causes or explains the motive-power of steam or electricity. The force is anterior, not the physical instrument.

-- Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 86.

Consciousness is not only power of awareness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and creative energy. It can determine its own reactions or abstain from reactions; it can not only answer to forces, but create or put out from itself forces. Consciousness is Chit but also Chit Shakti, awareness but also conscious force.

-- Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 234

We mean [by planes of consciousness, planes of existence] a general settled poise or world of relations between Purusha and Prakriti, between the Soul and Nature. For anything that we can call world is and can be nothing else than the working out of a general relation which a universal existence has created or established between itself, or let us say its eternal fact or potentiality and the powers of its becoming. That existence in its relations with and its experience of the becoming is what we call soul or Purusha, individual soul in the individual, universal soul in the cosmos; the principle and the powers of the becoming are what we call Nature or Prakriti.

--Sri Aurobindo The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 429

... the knowledge we have to arrive at is not truth of the intellect; it is not right belief, right opinions, right information about oneself and things, that is only the surface mind's idea of knowledge. To arrive at some mental conception about God and ourselves and the world is an object good for the intellect but not large enough for the Spirit; it will not make us the conscious sons of Infinity. Ancient Indian thought meant by knowledge a consciousness which possesses the highest Truth in a direct perception and in self-experience; to become, to be the Highest that we know is the sign that we really have the knowledge..... For the individual to arrive at the divine universality and supreme infinity, live in it, possess it, to be, know, feel and express that one in all his being, consciousness, energy, delight of being is what the ancient seers of the Veda meant by the Knowledge.

-- Sri Aurobindo The Life Divine, pp. 685-6 .

TraineeHuman

1st October 2022, 23:08

“Consciousness is a fundamental thing, the fundamental thing in existence–it is the energy, the motion, the movement of consciousness that creates the universe and all that is in it–not only the macrocosm but the microcosm is nothing but consciousness arranging itself.” (Sri Aurobindo, 1970, pp.236-237).

"Generally, the word consciousness is used to denote just the mental consciousness but for Sri Aurobindo it denotes all possible levels and layers of consciousness- material, subconscient, subliminal, emotional, sensory, aesthetic, mental and the supramental. He viewed human consciousness as a laboratory where an individual through the intense power of aspiration can deepen, widen and heighten the consciousness. Deepening helps in releasing the intensity of love within the heart -imbuing each atom of creation with deep peace and dance with joy or Ananda. Widening of the consciousness is a movement in which a person aspires to be inclusive by appreciating the multiplicity and diversity of thought patterns and ways of being. Heightening the consciousness takes an individual towards the higher, illumined, intuitive and overmind where macro-cosmic rhythms can be felt within the micro-cosmic-personality in intimate interconnectedness –each flower, tree, cloud, stardust, the vile and the saint becomes one’s own essence. In the highest supramental realm, chit-shakti (Consciousness-Power) can be directly expressed- our true aspiration is effectuated directly in Reality."

"I hoped to build a rainbow bridge

Marrying the Earth to the Sky

And sow in this dancing planet midge

The moods of infinity. "

Sri Aurobindo (1972,p.99) in A God’s Labour

"It is my endeavor in this article to introduce to you the vision of Psychology as a discipline of knowledge as seen by the Indian Seer and Yogi Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950). Sri Aurobindo writing towards the beginning of the 20th century was well aware of the psychological thought as it developed in the West in the 19th century. He was also well versed in the psychological thought contained within many of the psycho-spiritual texts like the Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad-Gita etc. Sri Aurobindo’s aim was to create a scope for psychological enquiry and practice, that deepened beneath the visible midge surface nature of humanity and could capture the vast moods of infinity.

"Can psychological enquiry and practice go beyond the visible midge surface nature of humanity and capture the vast moods of infinity?

"The Intellectual crucible at the beginning of 20th within which Sri Aurobindo’s evolutionary through was born was yet dynamised by thoughts of Kant, Hegel, Freud, Darwin, Nietzsche and Karl Marx. It was an age that attempted to look at the humanity anew, divested of cultural repressions, organised religion, entrenched social habits and order. This age attempted to give back to the human being, its natural-ness and freedom to find without dogma the origins of its nature. Sri Aurobindo recognised that humanity was impelled to seek maximum freedom for itself and created a theory that would help humanity consciously take the next step in evolution. However, according to Sri Aurobindo a release of repression from vital desires controlled through agency of ego or surface morality was not capable of yielding to humanity the freedom and progress that it desired. He sought to create a ‘rainbow bridge’ between human urge to be free from repression and the need for human vitality to be rooted strong in the purifying streams of the ‘Superconscient’ as mentioned in the Vedic and Upanishadic literature. According to him, to find healing and progress, it is important to create receptivity in the being for higher light rather than directly confront the darkness that is rising from the Subconscient. He remarks:

“The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms forever in the Light…You must know the whole before you can know the part and the highest before you can truly understand the lowest. That is the promise of the greater psychology awaiting its….” (Sri Aurobindo, 1970, p. 1608, emphasis added).

"A Greater Psychology
Can Psychology become the ‘Science of Consciousness’?

"What is this greater Psychology that Sri Aurobindo talks about? According to Sri Aurobindo (1997) Psychology rather than being a ‘Science of Behavior’ needs to a ‘Science of Consciousness’. He iterates that the psychologists of the 19th century in a bid to make Psychology into an objective, independently verifiable science fell into three major errors while conceiving the disciplinary knowledge which have limited the study of psychological possibilities of humanity. These are:

…the materialistic error which bases the study of mind upon the study of the body; the sceptical error which prevents any bold and clear-eyed investigation of the hidden profundities of our subjective existence; the error of conservative distrust and recoil which regards any subjective state or experience that departs from the ordinary operations of our mental and psychical nature as a morbidity or a hallucination,—just as the Middle Ages regarded all new science as magic and a diabolical departure from the sane and right limits of human capacity; finally, the error of objectivity which leads the psychologist to study others from outside instead of seeing his true field of knowledge and laboratory of experiment in himself. (Sri Aurobindo, 1998, p.177, emphasis added)

"Sri Aurobindo (1997) conceives of Psychology as a subjective science. Sri Aurobindo (1998) writes that “Psychology is necessarily a subjective science and one must proceed in it from the knowledge of oneself to the knowledge of others” (p.177). This has a significant import also for the way in which our knowledge transactions are structured. Most disciplines of knowledge, for instance, have as their focus the study of the ‘other’ rather than the self. The educators are interested in knowing about and teaching the students, the psychologists learn about their clients, doctors and nurses about their patients etc. In Sri Aurobindo’s view the psyche of the teacher, the healer, and the worker is the critical instrument which when developed to fineness can become capable of facilitating transformative change through its stillness, calm, radiance and intensity. In educational curricula and in healing arts there need to be space for the personal curriculum of each individual. It was fundamental to Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy that ‘Nothing can be taught’ and the knowledge that an individual seeks lays within the deep precincts of their own subjectivity. This existential knowledge critical for the growth of psychological being needs to be self-discovered, honed and creatively expressed to nurture the self and society. The role of the educator, healer or mentor is to create an environment within which this self-exploration can take place. "

A Deep Relational Knowledge

"The co-creation of knowledge is a deeply relational process. It can be seen through Sri Aurobindo’s (2005) lens through fourfold order of knowledge- Knowledge through separative indirect contact; knowledge through separative direct contact; Knowledge through intimate direct contact; and Knowledge through identity. Wherever, there are likely to be a rigid role division between an educator/student or healer/healed in terms of entrenched hierarchies and one way communicative pattern that choke individual voice and expression, a separative consciousness with indirect touch is likely to become dominant mode of communication. In Sri Aurobindo (2005), “there is no direct touch between our consciousness and their consciousness, our substance and their substance, our self of being and their self-being” (p.547). This psychological distance becomes even more pronounced through ‘othering’ of individuals and communities based on prejudice, stereotype, exploitation and creating dispossession. A conscious challenging of these conditioned habits can bring us in greater touch with the ‘other’ through separative direct touch where we can observe, understand and appreciate the ‘other’ person. The separation yet remains. The third kind of relation i.e., knowledge through direct intimate touch brings two person still closer, no longer separative but linked to each other in intimate thought emotion and rhythm. The deepest relational knowledge is through identity. In such relational knowledge one can feel the being of one person flowing through another -one in identity and love. This state is deeply transformative and capable of healing the existential ‘touch of tears’ that marks our lives and creates incompleteness. This sense of completeness or integrity of experience is the aim of both education and healing.

The Dynamics of Transformation: The Sun Within and Without

"For Sri Aurobindo the human person is a transitional being who is still in the process of evolution. The fact that sorrow and suffering exist on this earth and is part of human experience indicates that we have not as yet gained the inner and outer balance that we yearn for. According to Sri Aurobindo (1999) almost all Problems of existence are problems of harmony. Harmony can be achieved through individual and collective effort and transformation.As individuals our essence is Sachhidananda. We carry a Sun within- our consciousness Swayamprakasha or self- luminous.

The art of discovering the Sun within

“Consciousness is a fundamental thing, the fundamental thing in existence–it is the energy, the motion, the movement of consciousness that creates the universe and all that is in it–not only the macrocosm but the microcosm is nothing but consciousness arranging itself.” (Sri Aurobindo, 1970, pp.236-237).

" Generally, the word consciousness is used to denote just the mental consciousness but for Sri Aurobindo it denotes all possible levels and layers of consciousness- material, subconscient, subliminal, emotional, sensory, aesthetic, mental and the supramental. He viewed human consciousness as a laboratory where an individual through the intense power of aspiration can deepen, widen and heighten the consciousness. Deepening helps in releasing the intensity of love within the heart -imbuing each atom of creation with deep peace and dance with joy or Ananda. Widening of the consciousness is a movement in which a person aspires to be inclusive by appreciating the multiplicity and diversity of thought patterns and ways of being. Heightening the consciousness takes an individual towards the higher, illumined, intuitive and overmind where macro-cosmic rhythms can be felt within the micro-cosmic-personality in intimate interconnectedness –each flower, tree, cloud, stardust, the vile and the saint becomes one’s own essence. In the highest supramental realm, chit-shakti (Consciousness-Power) can be directly expressed- our true aspiration is effectuated directly in Reality.

"For Sri Aurobindo – Psychology leads from the study of mind and the soul in living beings to the perception of the one soul and one mind in all things and beings. (Sri Aurobindo, 1999, p.51) The inner and the outer Sun are one in essence, matter and spirit entwined in a deep unity –our infinite possibilities lie curled in the lap of Eternity.

An Integral Compassion

"Sri Aurobindo’s gaze towards evolving humanity was of a deep compassion. He recognized and affirmed the struggles of humanity as part of its existential condition. Ignorance was as much a part of this journey as knowledge as we grow through both. We are Divine-in-the-making. Perfection is not the end-point, rather each moment in our psychological journey was a point of perfection. In his view, the same psychological principle that helped us evolve can become a hindrance in our journey after it has reached its fruition. For instance, human ego helps the personality to take a bounded for and shape against the white background of Infinity and helps us operate in this world through our desire, will, reason and effort. However, this same ego also is the source of ‘othering’ and separativeness. Desire creates but is in essence uncontrolled and knows no final satisfaction. Effort and will are creative but can become frenzied and purposeless. Reason rescues us from superstition and infra-rationality but it cuts at its own arguments. Thus the very psychological principle that allowed us to affirm our humanity also becomes a bar in the same moment. In Sri Aurobindo’s words:

"When we have passed beyond knowings, then we shall have Knowledge. Reason was the helper; Reason is the bar. When we have passed beyond willings, then we shall have Power. Effort was the helper; Effort is the bar. When we have passed beyond enjoyings, then we shall have Bliss. Desire was the helper; Desire is the bar. When we have passed beyond individualising, then we shall be real Persons. Ego was the helper; Ego is the bar. When we have passed beyond humanity, then we shall be the Man. The Animal was the helper; the Animal is the bar” (in The Mother, 2004, p.367).

"For Sri Aurobindo all that we are, all that we shall be, is a divine promise. Each individual is a free determinant their unique journey to the Divine. Cultures, beliefs, climes, language, expression may differ but inward experience of each individual is an addition to the progress of this Cosmos. Each individual aspiration is like a walk in a virgin forest creating a path that no one has walked before. Yoga or intentional development fast forwards this process through a conscious impetus for transformative change. It creates an inwardisation of consciousness which then can transform our outer nature – body, emotions, senses and mind. Sri Aurobindo believed that it was possible to have life Divine on Earth. He believed that human nature can be changed and divinised and that luminous societal structures can be created that would be free of violence, exclusion, oppression and exploitation. He leaned forward to hear the whispers of the footsteps of the future. I leave you with his words-

“I have gathered my dreams in a silver air
Between the gold and the blue
And wrapped them softly and left them there,
My jewelled dreams of you.”

– Sri Aurobindo (1972, p.99) in A God’s Labour

TraineeHuman

2nd October 2022, 20:54

Vangelo

2nd October 2022, 21:52

EXERCISE (Learning about silence) Next time you have a holiday/vacation, keep yourself shut in one room for two days (if possible). As far as you can, do nothing all day except to actively wipe away every single thought (or image) that ever comes to your mind, immediately as it comes up.
Simply "bathe" in the silence. Ah, what freedom!
I'm challenging you all to do it.

I would like to share my personal experience with something similar. The short version is, I agree with TraineeHuman. In my experience, it can be a time of unfathomable freedom, peace, and connection with oneself. I gift, for sure. But, it can also be a time of intense pain as reality sets in. The more one tries to ignore their reality, the more difficult and painful it becomes.

I have been lucky enough to participate in four, 11 day consciousness and meditation retreats in the Arizona desert where 3.25 days are spent in 'silence and fasting' (I am going to my 5th in March - Topic: opening the heart chakra). Silence is indeed what you think it is, i.e., silence. No speaking, laughing, sign language, or anything like that. Fasting means no food, but you are able to drink water, fruit juice, coffee, or tea. The retreat is also electronics free for the entire duration. These are not new age retreats or anything like that. The woman who runs them has been doing it for almost 40 years.

In any event, the first time I did this I was certain I would not last 1.5 days without food. Silence, was not a problem for me. For others in the group, they were terrified of the silence. Typically, there is a 50/50 split between the participants.

I now look forward to the silence and fasting part of the retreat more than anything else. This is because it is a time when I can shut out the world and be with me. During the 3rd retreat (focus was on shadow), I spent those 3 days in deep mourning. I had no idea why I needed to mourn but it hit my like a brick. I also did not initially know the source of my wounds, eventually I figured it all out. The intensity and pain was like nothing I had ever experienced. It took vulnerability and courage for me to confront my reality and in the end, I am a much more powerful, and humble person who sees so much more beauty and joy in the world. I am forever grateful.

I will state, that not everyone who attends the conference has such a healing experience, but it is safe to say at least 75% do.

TraineeHuman

3rd October 2022, 00:45

Why would you have spent three days in deep mourning, Vangelo? Let me suggest a possible clue. As I see it, those retreats would be initially about gaining some mastery of, and overcoming, suffering. So here are some reflections about the role of suffering.

We can't get anywhere by repressing our bad or painful experiences. We have to face them completely, sooner or later., if we're serious about finding freedom and bliss. They are all valuable and needed lessons. But they are also milestones on our journey, which we need to pass, as soon as we've faced the suffering involved in each case.
Likewise, pain forces us to learn how to concentrate more deeply -- because we can't conquer it unless we match it in seriousness and by learning to concentrate more powerfully than the intensity with which the pain is pressuring down on us. Anyone intimately familiar with the creative process knows that the creation of something beautiful or good or wonderful or new is only ever possible through going through "labour pains" which also feel super-uncomfortable, but without which the creation simply cannot happen, as it emerges out of all that conflict. The more intense the conflict and frustration, the more beautiful the end product. Because of this, you have to train yourself (early on, let's hope) not to ever let depression or the feeling that victory won't in the end be possible for you, to win! Welcome, folks, to the (true, adult) spiritual life! As Vangelo can tell you. Eventually, though, you can learn how to out-"burn" the pain of any difficult situation or suffering with even more pwerful "doses" of bliss -- almost like a fireman who puts out (potential) outbreaks of unhappiness.

Bliss etc is also impersonal, so you need at some point to stop thinking of yourself and open to the Force, which is something much greater.
Also, pain and suffering can only be gotten rid of by the power of something greater -- so what a blessing it is when you find some of that stuff.
That's probably enough reflections for one post, but this subject is beautiful and vast, and in another post I'll see if I can find some more relevant reflections on your experience, Vangelo.

TraineeHuman

3rd October 2022, 04:08

Vangelo, the fact that you had a sense of "deep mourning" obviously suggests you experienced something very important and of major significance to yourself. One only deeply mourns someone, or something, one has deeply died to (or that has truly died, for you). This attests to the power of carrying out the exercise properly.

Equally, your undergoing a "deep mourning" for the old you clearly suggests that you must have discovered some major new kind of freedom in yourself. That too is nothing to be sneezed at, because the desire to find true freedom is something that lies irremovably wedged in the deepest layers of the human heart, I believe. Now it's up to you to make it truly flower.

Vangelo

3rd October 2022, 17:32

... Now it's up to you to make it truly flower.
I have, and continue to do so every day. I am blessed to have had this opportunity and I continue to do this work.

My hope for everyone, is that they are able to seize the opportunity and muster the courage to do this type of work for themselves.

TraineeHuman

6th October 2022, 20:14

What I claim to you is that reason in itself understands nothing about life, about the real problems of life.

Any time a "reason" is true, the person who has or sees the reason is actually primarily acting purely by intuition (i.e., by direct seeing, direct in-sight). Intuition is something higher than, above, all reasons (in all the areas that matter most --- not just politics etc).

I do wonder if so many people's lives are just epilogues, tragically. And why so? Is it too much "work"? If not, then why, apparently, where it counts, aren't a lot more of you /us permanently taking up the practice described in post #2899, and by Vangelo in post #2900? And NEVER giving up, no matter what the cost or inconvenience.

I consider that is tragic.

We should always, always go deeper, and see what lies beyond the outer surface.

TraineeHuman

6th October 2022, 21:15

It's about (temporarily) bringing the egoic activity of the (ordinary) mind (which is merely like an old though multifunctional TV set) to rest, but not the soul's activity, which still goes on. True passivity just means openness to something higher. So, it's about the (thinking) mind going temporarily inactive, and getting open to something higher -- which is the soul. The soul usually (but NOT in this exercise) watches all your thoughts as they happen in your mind, but it absolutely doesn't "own" them. As the Zen poem says, selling short the tiniest distance can turn into your falling into the deepest chasm.

Orph

8th October 2022, 04:02

TraineeHuman

9th October 2022, 03:30

While I accept your point, Orph, I'm also acutely aware of something else. That is that human beings are capable of demonstrating far greater awareness than they customarily do. And at times I wonder rather intensely about why their wings have been chopped like that, so to speak. No doubt it has something to do with the conditioning coming from their parents and society. But I know with certainty that there's something fishy about that. Also, I believe I've seen many times, both in or as a result of, my own spiritual experiences, that the "norm" of not living the true greatness we all have is quite phony. (And not in an insane, delusions of grandeur way either.) And I've often wondered about why we don't all (including myself) express our natural greatness (without the distorti0on of conceitedness) much more fully much more often. Why don't we look in the mirror and see truly? We
seem to "click into it" at certain allowed moments or situations, such as falling in love, or fighting against all odds to save our own life or someone else's, or giving birth, or dying (and exiting). But why can't we accept that this is and always has permanently been our own true natural state? I think some very experienced meditators will nod in agreement and appreciate what I mean.

TraineeHuman

11th October 2022, 03:22

There have been countless times throughout this thread where you state that we have hundreds, if not thousands of lifetimes to get where we are going. An eternity, in fact. Please keep that in mind when you (apparently) get exasperated about how few, if any of us are doing the work necessary to get our spiritual house in order. Patience. We'll get there eventually.
:sun:

Besides, we are all at different 'levels', so to speak. Just as some people have a natural talent to play the piano, others have a natural ability to do the things you have been talking about here in this thread all these years. I could practice on the piano 16 hrs a day for 20 years or more and still not get past a certain level of mediocrity. I just don't have that aptitude.

And so it is with all the things you talk about in this thread. I have learned a lot from you over the years and I'm very appreciative of all you've said. And I'll keep plugging away because, ...... well, ...... there's so much to gain and really nothing to lose. I'm not giving up, nor am I feeling down and out. I'm just happily plodding along through the eons at my own pace. Someday, I'll get 'there'
:sun:

The soul is a kind of back-seat driver, unfortunately. That's bad news for most people, because they kind of insist on driving from the front seat. Works with a motor car, but not with life at a more profound level, not with the soul that's the only true driver we have. An elusive driver, yes, indeed.

Look for it in your groggy dreams, or maybe somewhere out of the corner of your eye that you can't quite catch. Anywhere but on the surface that we and society continually encourage us to live out of it as if it was real (in any deep sense). The inner just doesn't live in the outer so much.

The soul is a watcher. It just watches our antics patiently, and knowing that we won't listen to its wisdom anyway -- except in our moments of genuine love or deep intuitive understanding from the inside, or in remembering and understanding the meaning of one of our dreams. And you always thought you must be pretty goofy to have your heart in such a goofy, remote, "watcher" type of place -- even though from there one can care all the more deeply.

The soul just observes our surface self, and it sends out messages and impulses to the personality, but those messages are mere suggestions, almost always (mis)interpreted by mental thought and emotional feeling, or just brushed aside. The trick is to find a way to bring the soul to the front a lot more, to turn everything inside out somehow.

What pushes the soul awareness into the background is the vividness and intensity of our normal waking experience. We live in a world of intense sensation, which brings with it pleasure and pain, and rivets our attention. Grow up a little, and don't play with the tots so much. Plus we're grabbed by desires, that channel our awareness and focus it on projects like acquiring wealth, experiencing pleasure, and pursuing righteousness and vengeance, all of which focus on bringing about certain sets of worldly conditions. And we live in a world of thoughts, which connect us to our world, but also cut us off in webs of our own prejudices and opinions. It is the vividness and fascination with these waking experiences that thrust our soul awareness into the background.

So, then, the soul can easily be drowned out by the noise of everyday life. To bring ourselves closer to the soul we ultimately have to cultivate, and learn to "read" and ultimately enjoy as the center of all the aliveness there is, the giants known as "mere" silence and inner stillness.

Ah! Fortunately, there's also a way to cultivate the soul for those of us who aren't yet able to muster spiritual peace. We can pursue the True, the Good, the Loving, the Total, and the Beautiful in our lives. These qualities are all essentially soulful. Wherever we achieve skillful truthfulness, compassionate justice, selfless love, authentic self-integration, acts of wanton kindness or generosity, and anything truly beautiful, even in sport, there we find the key.

TraineeHuman

11th October 2022, 22:50

Orph, the following is merely a partial response to the question I think you're asking (assuming I've understood you correctly at all). At any rate, it's the best I can offer off the cuff right now.

You do need to search for your soul very diligently to truly understand and feel your self deeply, including the details both of your strengths and also all your conditionings and past traumas (including your birth trauma) and ALL your mistakes and hopefully also all of your liberations from suffering and from ignorance. We all need to do it. The great, ultimate, heroic challenge of life.

Also, you need to eventually find a deep sense of your soul's wonderful presence inside you always (if possible), and a sense of its Divine qualities (all the positive things). This is a very long, gradual process, of course. You have to learn how to eventually totally lose your mind in its object -- and to do that sanely. The world is literally you, and you literally are the world. (Sorry.) A paradox, but true. (The totality of your consciousness contains, well -- all consciousness everywhere.)

You also need ideally to have experienced the Divine worlds and thence learnt to "re-produce" elements of them within yourself and eventually to surrender to the Divine in an adult way. Even just from the above words, it's clear that your soul should be profoundly evolving and growing throughout the course of your life. The hard part is getting to the points where it can in many ways take you over, so that now gentleness and sensitivity and a supreme state of almost utter quiessence inwardly are natural to you even as also so is the strength and endurance to withstand weakness or impermanence of the wrong sort, because that is all part of letting the soul govern you too. The soul is kind of the ambassador who represents eternity. You also surrender willingly to the unknown, because that is also a big aspect of the Divine's purposes. But it's all in the doing, and not so much in the description of the doing. Quiessence everywhere. You just have to do it. Somehow. Nobody promised you a rose garden. Not till towards the end of the journey.

If peace, freedom from unhaooiness and unjoyfulness, and greater understanding are to come, they must come in through and as the soul, and from something wider than the individual but also, still, from the soul. There's no escape, I'm afraid.

Orph

12th October 2022, 02:30

Yup. 100% agree. This is stuff I already know. The absolute utter magnificence that is within me. That IS me. (That is within all, and IS all). And no, I don't say that as some delusional person seeking some kind of power or fame or anything.

But, yeah, I certainly have a lot of work to do to get to that state of beingness that you are describing. Actually, I don't think of it as work, but more of playfulness. It's fun. It really is. Once, in a semi-meditative state I briefly, oh so briefly, touched, barely, barely touched on this magnificence that resides within us all. (In other words, I'm not special. We are all "special"). But, I KNOW it's there. I KNOW that I am.

It's a playful predicament I, or should I say we, find ourselves in. I know what has to be done. Kind of reminds me of that old "Mission Impossible" TV show from long ago. The part near the beginning where the guy would play the cassette tape that said "Your mission, should you decide to accept it, ........" . Well, here we are. Let the fun continue.
:happythumbsup:

TraineeHuman

14th October 2022, 05:27

A certain highly respected clairvoyant once told me that there was a central, core lesson that my current lifetime had been planned to teach me. And that this lesson was one of learning to live with and integrate, and not feel overwhelmed by, disharmony and its inevitable repeated interference with one's plans or intentions. This made sense to me (and still does!) partly because in the past certain very reliable clairvoyants had told me I had had an exceptionally small number of past lifetimes as a human being on this planet. Instead, apparently, I had lived in astral or other worlds. But such worlds are known to be significantly more harmonious places than the earth currently is or has been. So, my lack of fuller acquaintance with disharmony was to be expected -- and is the number one area I was meant to learn about in this current lifetime on this planet.

So, then, I'd now like to present some brief musings on what harmony is and means, that I've learnt so far. Harmony means being (considered to be) the same or similar, or in active, mutual cooperation or interrelationship. It's what integrates, and so removes or reduces conflict. Harmony is what makes unity strong.

In my opinion we can safely contrast the world of harmony with the world of thoughts and emotions. What do thoughts and emotions do? One thing they do, when occuring individually or when taken individually, it seems to me, is to implicitly create conflict or contradiction. "Not this, but that." But can we instead live in a state of "seeing" things that's beyond for ever making comparisons and liking or disliking? Beyond the world of thought and the world of emotion altogether? After all, if our situation is that there's already plenty of harmony, enough harmony to go around, who needs preferences then?

Ah, but what about the disharmony that comes from one part of us being pulled in one direction, and some other part of us strongly being pulled in another? Then our whole world is split. Such fracturing in some way in our consciousness is what is known as neurosis, the neurotic split. Many spiritual teachings and traditions have placed enormous significance on curing us of this, and on our masterfully building a true unity within ourselves to spite it. True harmony within ourselves. Without that, we're considered not to quite fully exist, in certain ways.

Then there's also: "When I am able to express my inner truth and be listened to, I live in harmony, in alignment." That is. the philosophical side of ancient Eastern wisdom tells us that we're all part of a vast multiplicity, one in essence but each distinct in the cosmic play. From a "big picture" view, then, each part is a part of the Divine itself. This is the real, genuine essence of every one of us (know it or not). That is why we can realistically strive for harmony, all right. We truly can do it (but it often takes years). The whole world can do it, some day. But we can and certainly should start with our own selves, now.

To achieve this, though, we of course need to become extremely good at staying awake. But if we are truly a part of the Divine, which from a big picture view we are, then for example if we have semi-infinite patience we can "scan" ourselves -- our mind -- and even our body for places where disharmony has taken root, and we can identify what is there, what distortion or reaction, and we can probe it in great detail and bring it out into the light. Usually there is a whole chain of disharmonies, and they go deeper and ever deeper, but if we can "hear out" or just "feel out" and bear to face each one's full story -- and I do mean the full story of each link --, we can dissolve that chain piece by piece. And remember, and feel inside, how eternity (or, at least, harmony) does definitely lie ahead of you, and within you (waiting to be brought out).

To achieve all this, it seems to be necessary to silence the mind in certain respects, and experience all things at a level beyond the mental and emotional levels. Can we go there?

TraineeHuman

19th October 2022, 05:57

Emptiness is actually pure, undistilled Being. It's free of the "me'. In fact, it's mighty damn elusive in every way.

There are Western notions that "emptiness" means space, or something closely related to space. Then there's the mainstream ancient Eastern view. This has often been expressed, within Buddhist traditions, through the notion of sunyata, the Buddhist Void. Here, emptiness (as far as it's considered to make up the Void) is actually pure, undistilled Being. And we are all considered to at all times be under a significant pressure to become totally empty, so that then (and only then), paradoxically, we can "be" fully. Never mind that that's not clearly expressible at all if we try to capture it through language or thoughts. Never mind that the last thing we probably want to do is let go of our "me" because in fact it doesn't really have content anyway, in an ultimate sense. Pure Being is free of any "me", but the cosmic "I" (embracing and incoporating our emptied "I") lives on unscathed.

Ernie Nemeth

19th October 2022, 12:29

The 'me' we construct from the moment of conception is a distraction and ultimately an illusion.

Yet we make connections to this 'me' that holds us to it by an unbreakable golden rope, inextricably linked to our perception of self.

Since the emotions and the mind are also connected to this false self, the only way to break through the delusion of self, is by silencing the mind and calming the emotions.

Ever try meditating in the midst of a mosquito swarm? That is the level of discipline required to succeed in the attempt of seeing through the illusion of selfhood. It is nigh on impossible.

It requires a realization that everything the 'me' cares about, identifies with, is unimportant and in the most fundamental way possible an impediment to success.

Realize you don't care about anything in this world, that everything in this world is designed to bind you to your self-deception, and you might have a chance to momentarily glimpse your true self. But eventually the mosquito bites recapture your attention and the world crashes back down around you once more, overwhelming your true sight and disrupting your meditation.

The world we walk through is the veil that has been pulled over our eyes to 'protect' us, that is, protect the 'little me', from the intrusion of the Truth.

TraineeHuman

20th October 2022, 01:56

I think we're in agreement, Ernie, that we all ideally need to (ultimately, hopefully) dissolve the "me", or at least remove all its chains around the self. The "me" tries to capture all "my" experience. But "my" experience is the experience of the self, and not of the "me". Here the self is something universal, while the "me" is a kind of trapping mechanism, and through its egocentrism it always creates chaos. Even in the middle of the desert, alone, it would mostly just create chaos. The chains, the tentacles, of the "me" distort how we see everything, almost everywhere and any time. The "me" is all those semi-randomly buzzing bugs, but the proper or true self is (or should be) also present, and is always significantly connected to the soul.

I don't completely agree with you that everything in this society is working against our chances of finding true freedom. It's also of course the case here that perhaps only in being forced to overcome certain things that we can indeed become truly stronger.

Does self also need to be "made empty"? Yes, but for "made empty" read "more coherently universalised".

TraineeHuman

23rd October 2022, 01:14

I'd like to offer some reflections regarding the (to me) surprisingly popular notion that the universe is altogether a computer simulation of some sort (and assuming such a notion even 100% makes sense).

My problem is that before we even start, (for me) there are two insurmountable red flags. "The" universe? Even "the" multiverse??) To me, there is ultimately only totality. And the word "the" implies determinacy, which only exists or makes sense in the mental worlds and lower. In the formless worlds and the Divine worlds, nothing is fully determined until a version (or many versions) of it gets brought down into one of the mental worlds, which are the worlds where form does exist and rule. Meanwhile, "God" exists indeterminately. That's why, for example, choiceless awareness is the highest form of awareness in the world(s) we live in. If "perfection" is considered to somehow involve 100% precision and determinism, then "God" is actually and inevitably (because of God's size and (semi-infinite) flexibility) necessarily very, very far from perfect.

The second red flag for me is that no-one seems to ever explain what our universe is allegedly a "simulation" of. Is the "original" or "real" version untouchable or hidden or unknowable? Rather, our physical universe in some ways runs like clockwork. But that shows us that various natural processes in our universe run in the same kind of way as certain computer processes. All that proves is that in certain respects some computer processes imitate Nature, perhaps unwittingly. So what if they do? And so what if some computer processes are ones which Nature hasn't so far noticed a practical reason to invent them?

The higher worlds are just different, and indeterminate. They can't be simulated, because they're too indeterminate, and they're largely not governed by computations.

TraineeHuman

23rd October 2022, 06:47

There's something potentially quite deceptive about anyone's trying to mature spiritually just through reading or listening to material -- such as on the internet. Real spiritual growth comes primarily through very hard work on facing and dealing with one's unhappiness, or else through having and learning to sustain very positive experiences (NOT just ideas, either). Entire full person-years worth of that, and no less. It's a seemingly endless slog.

In their advanced form, the ancient Eastern meditation "religions" were psychotherapies. That was where psychotherapy was invented, and also integrated into every aspect of spirituality and of daily living. Most Westerners just don't seem to get that -- not without at least a thousand hours of (nothing but) hard labor. You just never got the memo unless you have processes going on in you almost all the time. Admittedly, much of that will carry on throughout the day and night subconsciously, subliminally. But to "wind it up" enough that it gets going permanently like that, that takes no less than person-years of intensive HARD work, much of which needs to be on a wordless level (or maybe a telepathic level can be OK, I guess). Who cares how many videos you watch or lectures you attend or books you read? But no, it takes endless intimate work with one's inner energies, by and large, running processes wordlessly and ever so sincerely. Now that's what knowing yourself means. You just can't get to heaven on earth without going through the gates of fully knowing yourself. (And knowing yourself is only the first major stage.)

Words are only on the surface. They don't penetrate into the depths of the soul, or of the subconscious. Deep inside is where all the real work goes on, seemingly forever.

Orph

23rd October 2022, 21:43

......... It's a seemingly endless slog. ......

Deep inside is where all the real work goes on, seemingly forever.Exactly. Which is why I no longer consider this to be 'work', (or an endless slog). I now find this all to be playfully exhilarating. When I look at it from the bigger picture, ..... that I AM a part of the I AM, ..... well, I can't put it into words. Words and concepts that make no sense from that larger perspective.

The ego drops away, so it makes no sense to say I AM. But what else can I say. And the bigger I AM also has no 'ego'. So to say "I AM a part of the I AM", is, .... well, kind of stupid because there really isn't an 'I', just an eternal "isness". Playful joyful isness.

Anyway, I'll stop posting because I don't want to derail this thread. But I'll continue reading because I do enjoy it and I have learned so much.

Ernie Nemeth

28th October 2022, 22:56

The way I like to think of the realization that the 'universe' might be a simulation is that, that position does not preclude that we all actually exist in the mind of God - the greatest simulation of them all...the simulation of reality, one might say.

And so from our perspective, the ceiling of our awareness can just barely grasp the sublime perfection of the Mind of God.

What lies beyond there, in the true reality that is God's alone...is a complete mystery.

TraineeHuman

29th October 2022, 03:29

The Egyptian-Jewish-Muslim-Christian worldview presupposes that there is a kind of super-ultra-gigantic, quite insurmountable gulf between God and man/woman. On the other hand, the worldview of Taoism and Zen Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism presupposes that in essence ultimately there is no such gulf, other than that as humans we are (currently) quite individual but/and (supposedly) not universal (yet). Guess which one of these two I consider to be the more accurate picture. Also, I do not consider that there are "degrees" of reality. All that is real fully is, and is ultimately sacred in nature. I don't agree at all that what we directly experience as the real world is all a big simulation. Not one bit. There's no go-between between us and reality. And I claim that we co-create it. God only creates or allocates an indeterminate slot of space for our experience to exist in. Then it's up to us to bring our own individualized version of divine mind in and make (create) definite sense of our individual situation. Underlying everything there is a cosmic unity between all things in existence, if you take the truly
ultra-big picture.

And is the infinite, indeterminate reality that is the Divine not free to infinitely diversify itself, endlessly on? Could it possibly do less than that and remain true to itself? And isn't its ultimate nature always unknowable and ineffable and indeterminable anyway, and forever so? But what it creates is new parts of itself, like growing new limbs, so to speak. Not fake, prosthetic limbs. Aren't these new "limbs" of God not the realest expressions of the fact that God is alive and continuing to express him/her/it-self ever further, ever evolving more new things? Just because we probably don't have the consciousness or the imagination to fully grasp the Divine Mind's total overview and perception of ultimate priorities, why do we dare to label the Divine's newest creations "artificial (because part of a supposed hologram)"? The world is real. Existence is divine.

Johnnycomelately

29th October 2022, 04:06

I have quite enjoyed this sub-thread, the previous 19 or so posts. These topics are dear to my heart.

......... It's a seemingly endless slog. ......

Deep inside is where all the real work goes on, seemingly forever.Exactly. Which is why I no longer consider this to be 'work', (or an endless slog). I now find this all to be playfully exhilarating. When I look at it from the bigger picture, ..... that I AM a part of the I AM, ..... well, I can't put it into words. Words and concepts that make no sense from that larger perspective.

The ego drops away, so it makes no sense to say I AM. But what else can I say. And the bigger I AM also has no 'ego'. So to say "I AM a part of the I AM", is, .... well, kind of stupid because there really isn't an 'I', just an eternal "isness". Playful joyful isness.

Anyway, I'll stop posting because I don't want to derail this thread. But I'll continue reading because I do enjoy it and I have learned so much.

So Orph, please don’t worry about derailing anything!

About individual identity, I agree with TH that it needs to be parsed, while (also) fully affirming it’s essential reality.

The way I see myself now, my ego is only qualitatively different from the ~eternal part. It is part of my I AM. It’s the visible part of my weaknesses, offered to me for review, and when the time is right, for correction. I’ve heard them called programs, borrowing from computer terminology. When 2 or more of these programs are intertwined, magnifying the binding effect, making the mess more difficult to understand and deal with, that is usefully thought of as a complex.

One of the times where I felt my individuality most strongly, was when I turned my attitude towards another by 180 degrees. That is what it felt like. From against to for. Knowing him, I knew that this action/intent was something from my side. I knew right then that it would have real power, be effective. And it did.

Ernie Nemeth

30th October 2022, 16:24

I think the idea that God create an 'environment' in which all phenomena are manifest, the 'slot of space' you mention, is the misleading factor. I would agree that we co-create reality to some degree, but since our perception of reality and our knowledge are limited, the co-creation happens mostly beyond our awareness.

The 'slot of space' is actually that 'slot of consciousness' in the mind of God that we each have been allotted. It is the miracle of life. Being the only miracle, it is the progenitor of miraculous events in perception that will catalyze a slow return to full integration with the godhead. That is to say. Perception gives way to Vision.

Such Vision is attainable in momentary glimpses for any conscious entity who wills it by the very fact that vision is fundamental to consciousness. Perception, on the other hand, is a useful device employed by the self-deluded to substitute illusion for reality.

To simplify: The difference between perception and vision is whose eyes are used to see with and whose mind is used to decipher what is seen.

In the deepest reverie, it is the stillness that impresses the most. That massive, silent, surety of infinite completion and unbroken repose instills a sense of calm and serenity and belonging. A Be-longing...

This is the longing of the questing heart, which is at the secret core of every heart: to get over the doing and get on with the being.

This longing sets the universe in motion...

TraineeHuman

31st October 2022, 01:01

Well, Vedanta quite explicitly espouses an "it's all in the 'mind' of God" view very similar to yours, I believe, Ernie. That includes the view that really it's the one same consciousness operating in everything, in every creature and lifeform and whatever. So yes, the Divine consciousness then has a "slot" for every thing to fit into, within itself.

To go further, one issue here, though, is that the mind of (the ordinary) man/woman is limited in the sense that he/she is taught by our education system to consider anything existing at a higher level than conceptual mind to be just an abstraction, in the sense of not something real. (The abstract artists would vehemently disagree, but they're a minority group.)

Westerners usually seem to have no understanding that some things lying beyond ("above") the mental world are more real ("closer to God") than any mental idea or name/label/description of them. This takes us to the beginnings of the realm of the unsayable, but most unfortunately that seems too much for the average Westerner. We see unsayable things through "vision", just as you say, Ernie, and not through concept-based "perception".

I think I would usually prefer to talk of something like "creativity" rather than "vision", Ernie, but otherwise I'm fully in agreement with you. Creativity is a higher mode of knowing than using the intellect, but one has to actually get engaged and immersed in it in order to understand it. "God", of course, is proverbially more steeped in it than any other being/consciousness/Force.

TraineeHuman

1st November 2022, 05:09

I'd like to offer a few brief reflections about what the nature of Divine Mind might be like.

For starters, I consider it's important to think of Divine Mind as something much more like a verb (or a relation) than a noun.

Secondly, some New Age people talk about Ascension. Well, I believe that a very profound and transcendental type of "Ascension" of our human mind -- with its rather blind instincts and vague conceptions and off-the-cuff intuitions -- is the first stage of what the Divine Mind is ultimately seeking to bring about. Even that is a transformation into something that right now seems almost utterly "other". For we -- our ordinary human mind-and-heart -- simply can't even fully imagine or envisage what perception with and through the Divine Mind would be like. The human mind-and-heart probably just aren't built that way. (Though at least we know it would be very blissful.) However, the human mind-and-heart can no doubt become transformed, and yearns to be transformed, into something else, I believe, something that isn't dazzled by the blinding bigness and infiniteness of the greater Light. Probably then that can grow into and be absorbed into the Divine, which at that point somehow in certain ways will completely transcend the distinction between individuality and totality.

Mind, even the Divine Mind, is ultimately just a boat, just a journey to a state of complete consciousness simultaneously of all that is implied by both individuality and totality. Who knows? The Divine Mind may itself well not have reached that turning point yet -- and that's assuming that that's a point in time. But I strongly suspect, however, that we're dealing with something so wholistic here that it's a point in something that's more fundamental than time itself.

TraineeHuman

4th November 2022, 05:46

In all forms of meditation, the primary instruction is to attempt to (in effect, by one means or another) empty one's present conscious awareness of all, or nearly all, of its prima facie content. This inevitably makes room for a certain portion of the content of one's subconscious or unconscious mind to rise into the surface of conscious awareness, whether we then even notice that this has happened or not.

This means that over time, the fruit of effective meditation becomes like reclaiming land from the sea. The conscious issues lessen in their significance for us as the deeper, formerly subconscious issues, which all along have driven so much of who we have believed we really are, take over even more and more of our behavior in everyday life -- except that now we are becoming ever more conscious of them.

After a long period of time, glimpses of the soul, which at first largely lies "buried" deeper than the subconscious, gloriously start shining through. The soul is also what is ultimately the whole miraculous driving force towards allowing our subconscious content to become more "normalized" and gradually more integrated with our conscious awareness. Such integration means a gradual but ultimately huge reduction in the opposition between our conscious and our subconscious sides, plus a transformation of that inner conflict from something conflictual to something creative, plus into something that unfolds our true individuality. In "normal" life we had usually strived to keep that entire huge inner conflict subdued and repressed.

In such ways as these, then, in the long run meditation means (effective) self-psychotherapy.

This transcendent and transformative function of the soul doesn't operate only in the realm of tension of opposites but also all the time in the whole yearning within the self’s drive towards wholeness, where conscious and unconscious elements of the psyche are in a relationship of complementarity and compensation. Here, over time, the fruits of meditation mediate and facilitate a wonderful fusion between inner and outer experiences. This does require, however, both a strong willingness to face reality and at the same time a strong imagination. Together, these gradually enable the inner changes and the outer life in the world to be wonderfully assimilated to each other. Everyone yearns for such wholeness one day, such a life in both the inner and outer worlds where they are fully integrated with each other.

TraineeHuman

22nd November 2022, 03:09

The Spirituality section of this Forum primarily presents, inevitably, of course, just ideas or thoughts or descriptions about spirituality, rather than any actual direct spiritual experiences. However, it's possible to use critical discussion or appropriate concepts to dispel various false illusions about the nature of reality (and of spirituality). At the same time, in deep spiritual experiences or insights we (or someone) may directly uncover major truths about the nature of reality. The descriptions of that may help others to also directly see what is truly there, for those who can look. You read the description, then you look and you see something you hadn't been able to before.

In particular, such spiritually derived truths may provide at least some direct insights into exactly why the physical world as we conceive it to be turns out to be, in part, a flat-out illusion that we need to be liberated from. In other words, we can get a direct description or two of what causes the illusoriness. That is what I intend to very briefly present a little of here, but we need to have some (if not a lot of) background explaining done first.

I tried to cover some small or scattered parts of this territory in the "Comparative philosophy" thread that I initiated a while ago in the Spirituality section. This time, I'd instead just like to briefly discuss aspects of the philosophy of A.N. Whitehead, and particularly to do so in terms of explaining some of the reasons why we ultimately need to be liberated from
the physical. Whitehead's view was that reality is made out of "processes" (i.e., relations) (or also out of "events") but not out of objects as the Western-educated person in the street unfortunately believes the real world to be to this day.

Since Whitehead formulated his philosophy, it has been conclusively proved that the subatomic world certainly isn't built out of objects (i.e., it's certainly quite unlike, say, the way a building is built out of bricks and whatever related objects and substances). Rather, it is indeed built out of quantum processes. (Think "processes equals verbs (or, better still, equals modes of being related), but certainly not nouns.") In this post I'm trying to eventually but briefly explain why, if we look hard enough and meticulously enough, we'll see the fabric of the world (the macro universe) is also in fact actually built out of processes, and not in fact ultimately out of any objects at all, -- at a macroscopic level, and not merely (as is now already well known) at the microscopic (subatomic) level of quantum phenomena! Indeed, in the quantum world, quarks, leptons, gauge bosons, etc. were proved to be always not localizable or distinguishable from the field in which they moved, and from which they appeared and disappeared. At least in physics, then, activity was not a byproduct of stability any more, but the other way around. The elemental was from now on conceived as an expression of the perturbed. "Substances", i.e. objects of any kind, on close inspection, turned out to "merely" be stabilized processes. Hence at the macro level also. The foundations on which Western thought (and most certainly scientism) was built were literally and metaphorically shaken, about a century ago.

Another component of the "reality is made of objects" worldview (which has to go) is reductionism. Reductionism relies completely on expectations that it's possible to make sense of the whole purely by studying its parts. But quantum physics has already demonstrated in various ways that the reductionist program is utterly unattainable. The universe is just too
holistic.

Moreover, holistic interaction with the environment goes on absolutely everywhere in the universe, at all macroscopic levels also -- as Whitehead pointed out long ago. For instance, something more specific that Whitehead also pointed out here is the false assumption of what he called “simple location”. By this term he meant the assumption that the nature of things is exhausted by their intrinsic or internal properties (so you need to "save your soul" because the soul is supposedly quite internal). But, Whitehead pointed out, this notion doesn't take into account relations or dynamic or internal properties that denote “togetherness.” In a word, then, Whitehead pointed out that although things aren't totally isolated from all other things, reductionism often requires us to treat them as if they were all so isolated.

It was also Whitehead who pointed out that the entire edifice of scientism and even of empiricism rests on the assumption that "simple location" is true. This includes the entire philosophical systems (or theories) of all the British empiricist philosophers (Locke, Hume, Berkeley, and so on). In turn, the validity of scientific measurements and experiments rests
wholly on the assumption that whatever is common (i.e., agreed upon by all those empiricist philosophers) in those philosophers' accounts of what makes valid reality is true and complete. But Whitehead pointed out that that all rests on the assumption that "simple location" is true. Let me now explain what "simple location" means, and then I'll provide a
simple knockdown argument which proves that "simple location" is absolutely a false notion. (Not that some of Whitehead's arguments against the validity of "simple location" weren't also altogether valid.) "Simple location" is essentially the notion that an object is real (it really exists) and is unique simply by virtue of ‭occupying a unique physical location at any given time.

My refutation of this notion is as follows. From the theory (and the fact) of relativity, the position or location of any object is never absolutely well-defined (and hence never coherently describable in any absolute sense), nor can it ever be. Instead, it is always relative. (I've also got a second, somewhat similar simple refutation , that draws on Heisenberg's uncertainty principle instead of on the theory of relativity.)

(I hope the subtlety of philosophical argument at this very abstract level doesn't seem unreal to some readers. It's about the very nature and basis of what constitutes reality itself.)

One thing to also notice here is that all attachment to a physical body carries with it a certain degree of reductionist isolation, and therefore something quite false that keeps us trapped. If we want to be liberated from having to come back to the physical world, we'd better let go of seeing ourselves as an isolated being that therefore craves attachments when in reality interconnection is our very essence at a deeper level of consciousness, and without interconnection we could not have individuality.

Turning now to questions about what survives death, we'd have to open up Whitehead's version of Pandora's box with regard to the gigantic philosophical question of what is identity. I don't mean at the superficial level of what is your name. You are not your name, and anyway we've already seen that your true identity is not that of an object but of something more like a process, which interconnects with possibly all other processes in "the" universe. ("The" universe is not isolatable or isolated either, hence my inverted commas.)

The whole notion of identity (of what "I" means) is much more complex and problematical than it may at first appear to us to be. So I'd better leave that to a future post.

Ernie Nemeth

22nd November 2022, 20:14

Everything that stands alone, stands within an encompassing structure, whether that is a mind or a physical space.

Consider the quanta, which itself denotes a 'quantity'. The quanta is akin to the semi-conductor of electronics, in that it quantifies reality before expressing it: there is a threshold that must be attained for change (action) to occur. Until the threshold is reached no prediction can be made, only approximations. Reality remains constant (stability) until a threshold is reached at which point a cascade of many alternate non-contiguous, incongruent, realities could manifest, but only one does. This process happens every instant, over and over.

Absolutism is a problem in the world of the finite (materiality). Every detail of an object can be scrutinized and further reduced and further isolated to infinite specifics. So even as an object is being dissected, it only leaves behind more to dissect. And the dissection can be dissected again as well. There is no end to reductionism.

There is no way to bridge the gap between the world of the material and the world of the immaterial, even though the two are intertwined and inseparable, until a threshold is reached. At that point, the gap is breached, a choice is made, and reality begins anew once more.

TraineeHuman

23rd November 2022, 03:01

It seems to me that talk of the infinite versus the finite is largely irrelevant to the topic here, Ernie. That topic being, how Whitehead's "processes" provide an account of what reality actually is greatly superior to any and every account of reality as being ultimately made up of "objects". I'm glad, though, that you described "qanta" (which I assume by the way are "objects", so in this discussion that would then pretty much be a no-no as a concept for Whitehead, and for me) as operating solely under the control of a "process".

(I also didn't exactly understand why you believed you needed to state that reductionism needs to be rejected. I had already argued in my post that it absolutely needs to be rejected, though I'm glad you agree for whatever different reasons.)

The concept of infinity is significant when one is considering an infinite number of objects of whatever kind. But not so much when one is considering processes (in Whitehead's sense). Many processes have no single "starting point", and many (most) are always in flux and so it isn't necessarily clear when we could say the process is or isn't perhaps undergoing infinitely many repetitions, or alterations. I suppose there are in principle infinitely many potential kinds of interrelations between different processes. But the whole emphasis on counting is a form of attempted objectification. The universe needs more emphasis on quality and fewer "bookkeepers" trying to exert forms of control over it.

I don't agree with (or maybe I don't understand) why you believe that there is "the world of the material" and also "the world of the immaterial". I would prefer to say that there's one world (well, one mega-process), and the physical world is part of (if not contained in) that.

Ernie Nemeth

23rd November 2022, 15:30

Infinity versus the finite is at the crux of every philosophical discussion, if only inferred. The same could be said about science, mathematics, physics.

It is the unsolvable riddle.

I do not believe there is a material world, but I accept the reality my eyes report back to me. It is that acceptance that I war against.

Sorry about the poor post. Got called away before I could edit the draft...

In no way am I trying to derail your thread. I hope you understand that.

TraineeHuman

6th December 2022, 06:07

There's a major reason why I brought up Whitehead's philosophy that everything that's real is ultimately a process, and not a thing or an object. That notion that everything is ultimately a process is (or is at) the very deepest core of ancient Taoism and of Zen Buddhism, and is also very central to all of Buddhism. (Most scholars agree that Zen Buddhism would more correctly be called "Zen Taoism", by the way.)

Many Alan Watts videos are somewhat packed full of major Taoist/Zen concepts of reality. In the teachings of Jesus, the meaning of, for example, the admoniition to "take no thought for tomorrow" refers in some way or other to having profound trust in life as a process.

Let me turn to my response to some of Ernie's most recent assertions. Most professional philosophers today actually don't agree that explaining and understanding infinity is the biggest problem of philosophy at all, despite what Ernie apparently believes. It is however true that a good ten percent of professional philosophers are fans of what is known as the philosophy of Absolutes (and usually at the same time they are fans of other philosophical worldviews as well). An Absolute is anything that's infinite or that's the Universe or God. Absolutes have some very interesting qualities. For example, whatever you add to them simply gets absorbed into them, and becomes a part of them. I would say that Absolutes simply have some very interesting properties, rather than their existence (or apparent existence) being some kind of (supposedly) unsolved problem.

Advaita Vedanta teaches that absolutely everything is already divine. The problem then is how has the absolute perfection and freedom of the Divine (think "the (Infinite") become so imperfectly expressed and so disguised as the ordinary reality we believe we see. Similarly, A Course In Miracles teaches that we and everything are already in heaven.

Most mathematical systems or theories do involve a (so-called) infinite number of numbers or mathematical objects (which are "infinitely large" or "infinitely small"). In the twentieth century various famous figures in the world of mathematics were asked whether they believed they were dealing with "real infinity" in their work. The unanimous answer was no, and that in reality what mathematicians are dealing with are just marks on paper which in themselves are in many ways ultimately meaningless, but at any rate certainly aren't part of the meaning of what is (true) infinity in reality, other than in minor, mathematical ways, when it comes to metaphysical significance. In other words, mathematical "infinities", both gigantic and microscopic, are a certain type of controlled fantasy objects. I don't see any good reason to believe it's some sort of unsolved mystery, as Ernie perhaps seems to imply.

Physicists use mathematics as in many ways their primary "language". They take it for granted that they can safely pretend there is an "infinite" supply of all types of objects, but they don't normally question whether this assumption makes sense or is valid. So, for most physicists an infinity of particles (or of whatever other entities) is just an unquestioned assumption, rather than a problem.

Ernie Nemeth

25th December 2022, 12:33

Everything in our world as we normally perceive it is transient, including our own perception of self. Science tells us that even the most stable element decays, dissipates, and disappears given enough time.

Our world is temporary.

Yet in this temporary state we find ourselves in, we 'know' our souls live forever - even though we have no reference we can apply to make that assertion.

This is because there is one thing that has no entropy that we are very familiar with - the mind. The mind as opposed to the brain that is, which, again, is only temporary.

This mind has no limits. It is a fount of inspiration. It is capable of any calculation or expression. It has a language that is universal. It transcends understanding and leapfrogs to comprehension. In fact, the mind is transcendent in nature because it has no limits.

All our experiences have occurred within this mind whether we believe there is a world 'out there' or not. All experience is sorted and made sense of by the mind, which then reports these conclusions to the brain. And since experience is cumulative, the mind contains the mechanism that converts the temporary into the permanent. More rightly put, the mind corrects the flawed perception of a self that believes it is not what it is in truth.

This in turn proves that the temporary is an illusion created by a delusional being lost in self-deception.

TraineeHuman

26th December 2022, 04:20

It's a mistake for anyone to say the mind isn't important. The mind is one part of our being human, so we all need to face and embrace and integrate that fully. We are beings with many sides to us, and the ordinary mind is certainly one of those.

On the other hand, my own and others' experience and understanding is that the mind can lead us (how wonderful!) to see that something much greater than it certainly does exist, and can indeed potentially become activated in us, permanently. And should be activated. Then you get the real Christmas, on an innermost level -- regardless of what may be happening externally around you.

The mind can point to that something greater, but not make it real. (And by the way, this includes being greater than the part of the mind that we call "intuition".) The mind is "only" a finger pointing at the moon. However, that "moon" is the soul or spirit in its truest and most wonderful essence (and is ultimately the Divine). It is the real "us", yet the paradox is that in our present form we're usually (almost all of us) quite out of touch with it. Maybe, if we work hard at it, we'll get occasional flashes of its brilliance. And yet, we need to go much further than that. Becoming successful at this is the ultimate quest for us all, and burns deep inside us all.

We need to somehow create the conditions inside us, in and through our pure consciousness, that are conducive to its (gradually) releasing itself and taking us over so that then, at last, we constantly see the real "us" turns out to have been this all along.

This is a huge topic, but I'd like to think that's an introductory summary of the quest.

TraineeHuman

28th December 2022, 03:25

What is "mind" really? I suggest it's certainly quite fully beyond any scientific explanation. The proof that this must be so is simply that the scientific method always presupposes that there is an enquiring mind there and complete already from the start. Kind of, underlying all science: "Before we can understand about in the beginning, before the universe and time ever were, we first have to presuppose the independent potential full activity of some form of the questioning and exploring mind." That assumption alone makes mind something quite mysterious and "beyond". Also, it makes many questions to do with what mind is in the first place be undecidable questions, or in the "too hard" basket, or at best incompletely explained. At least, that's true as far as all the established ways of Western thought are concerned.

In the twentieth century, two of the most famous and celebrated discoveries in mathematics and logic were, firstly, that the truth or falsehood of some mathematical statements is absolutely and necessarily undecidable, indeterminable; and secondly, that the nature or essence of what truth is is itself absolutely indefinable (conceptually). These discoveries prove that truth and mind can never be fully captured or described by computational means alone, i.e., not by any AI, ever. At that point, only pure (human) experience can lead the way forward.

Considerations like these make it refreshing for us to seriously consider the accounts of mind coming from The Eastern meditation traditions and great teachers. These accounts are based on concrete experiences by masters of so many "higher" levels of mind and intuition, and not primarily based on theory or just intuition, but on higher reality, no less. And they are generally holistic, rather than regarding the mind as something that breaks reality up into pieces.

And if human enquirers can't legitimately use the mind now and then to explore "everything" a little, then what's the point of being human?

TraineeHuman

30th December 2022, 03:43

Ernie, I would emphasize that we are souls, and we are not mind or minds. It's important not to confuse soul with mind.

Certainly, though, the seeking of ever greater or better knowledge of higher reality is very much one of the core motivations and one of the core behind-the-scenes activities and characteristics of the human soul. It is that sublime thirst somewhere deep within us all. And it does lead to at least some level of true satisfaction for at least some of us -- should we be so lucky as to find it (permanently). Somehow, though, that soul knowledge -- or perhaps I should say that knowing, or that higher consciousness -- is only useful to us to the extent that we manage to integrate it into our ordinary life; at least, that is, into our own rather private experience of daily life. But always also, here, that has to be into our whole perception of what simply "being alive" means or feels like to us. Notice I did say "whole" and "total".

The problem is, the mind continually and forever tries to construct its own little framework of understanding, its own rules of action, its own blinkers on itself. By doing so, it cuts itself off from the profound openness to penetrating into and "feasting on" the truth lying naturally deep within each individual situation and thing. The mind misses out. In this way the (thinking) mind is never at one with all there is. So it cannot act at a universal level like the soul does.

Ernie Nemeth

30th December 2022, 16:41

To me, when I use the term 'mind', I am speaking of the soul. I use the term mind because the soul is the thing under scrutiny.

Mind is other than 'brain', which is that 'thinking' organ that gets into all sorts of trouble because it often confuses itself as our identity. It is not the brain that emulates the soul, it is the mind that does.

This is rather a sticking point, and it is where I veer away from the 'thinking' of most. 'Thinking' is a misnomer, in terms of its definition. Thinking is more like guessing, more like one's preference or bias. The mind does not think because it knows. The brain must think because it does not know. Thinking is linear. Knowing is global.

The thing that knows created the thing that thinks. That is the order of creation. The Father has no father. The son is like the father, in that it can be a father itself.

TraineeHuman

31st December 2022, 02:48

Well, in Yoga/Vedanta the soul is the highest grade of the mind in its purest and clearest form. So there's no clear dividing line between the soul and the mind, and yet the two are different though very interconnected. On the other hand, the beyond-mind state is of course the part we need to develop more and more strongly, and is certainly the most important part of the soul. Also, what you believe you are experiencing or having insight into or knowledge about is different according to what level of the soul-mind you are using to do so.

And so, in Vedanta meditation is often seen as nothing but the overall purification of one's consciousness, i.e. of one's whole mind-to-soul continuum.

Ernie Nemeth

1st January 2023, 16:51

When we use our brains to rationalize, we often must first short circuit the mind - ignore it. This is because the world of man is false. In order to even perceive the world as a human does one must first accept many half-truths and unformulated assumptions. The mind cannot function in such a state. Actually, the mind never ceases to function. Instead, the person must set it aside and willfully ignore it.

This ignoring the mind in favor of the story of reality humans tell themselves requires active suppression. It is this active suppression that is eased during meditation. This easing of the suppression is the purification of one's consciousness. As the suppression is let go, the truth of the mind can express itself in a comprehensible manner.

What is a mind? Is there more than one?
Does not a mind denote consciousness? Do we share consciousness, or do we each have our own?
If we share the characteristics of our Creator, does our Creator have a brain?

These sorts of questions quickly answer themselves during meditation. The love, the stillness, the blazing light, eradicates the false human condition in a flash. Sadly, most often the experience only lasts as long as the meditation.
Yet on occasion, the transformation is so profound that it lasts for minutes, hours, days!

That is the transcendental part.

TraineeHuman

2nd January 2023, 03:43

Well, Ernie, I agree that meditation is based on in some way instantly and continually wiping away the conscious mind and emptying its contents. To me, though, talking of one's "story" seems to me like it could in some ways, possibly, sound too much like what the ego is all about. That needs to be sacrificed, forgotten.

I also would say that higher kinds of "mind" come in only when one is "leaving no footprints behind". The latter involves staying profoundly true to one's own inner self, one's own original nature. Never mind what suits anyone else. I suppose that whatever one sees strictly and honestly just with one's own eyes does have that originality, and hence has one's original nature.

Don't leave any footprints behind, and then there's no track of you, no story of "you" to bother about.

Ernie Nemeth

7th January 2023, 20:11

There is so much we do not understand.

If that statement can go undefended because it is obvious, then it might become evident that we were not designed to understand.

Understanding a thing (or anything) presupposes many undetermined parameters to just be without scrutiny. It is this inscrutability that is our bane. The inscrutable is not understandable. Yet we seek to understand a myriad of things simultaneously, each with its own set of inscrutable qualities. And we think that by combining these 'things' we can circumvent their inscrutable parts and understand them.

In meditation we do the same thing. The understanding, the rationalization, of the meditative state brings forth its inscrutable nature. In its purest form, meditation is passive. It happens to us. It is an experience. In the moment, it is a feeling, nothing more. As it happens, the state is interrupted by an inquiring brain that puts words to those feelings. But the words are not the experience. The words are the 'thing' that is happening, the feeling is the happening itself.

They are separate and distinct from one another. They are also exclusive in that if the experience is described, the experience itself is suspended for that time. It is impossible to both have the experience and describe it at the same time.

Somewhere along the way we have been convinced that thinking is natural. But if we were actually capable of this 'thing' called 'thinking' we would understand the 'things' we think, which we don't.

In the so-called human world, in the state of perception, where we walk through a realm of indistinct 'things', we are consumed by a need to understand so we can take appropriate action. And whether we act or react we merely guess at what motivates us really.

Yet when we drop the act, when we stop 'thinking', we can know what it means to be human.

We cannot ever understand it because the words are too slow, too small, and there are not enough of them to ever explain anything, not completely. Until we drop the pretense of 'thinking', of acting as if properly informed, we can never realize our true nature.

If any were ever to truly suspend their thinking in a meditative state, even for a split second, a mere pico-second, they would cease to be perceivable to the rest of us.

For once one's true nature is revealed to them in a moment of pure experience, the persona, the ego, the little self alone and vulnerable, is revealed as meaningless and dissolves into the unreality it always was.

If 'thinking' is suspended, and the need to understand recognized as a false premise, one becomes ready to comprehend and know. That knowledge is provided instantaneously in the meditative state.

There is so much we don't understand because in truth we don't stand under it, but all is available to any who wish it sincerely.

TraineeHuman

8th January 2023, 02:39

Well, Ernie, I would say understanding (and insight), in its fullest sense, is such a broad and fundamental topic, it defies being properly covered by any discussion or book. In traditional Eastern thought and culture, it was considered the supreme virtue. And not "intellectual understanding" such as what you seem to be largely using the word "understanding" to stand for throughout your post. In Western culture, of course, "love" was traditionally touted as the supreme virtue, but hypocritically so (usually). Today the worldwide culture is heavily influenced by "information gathering" and various related "virtues". Not that convenience and efficiency aren't in themselves practically useful things.

So, then, in our age, I believe one major and unavoidable challenge for spirituality is to develop powerful, categorical ways of "silencing (turning down the "volume" knob in) the thinking mind" that then open the doors for us to go well beyond, or very radically reinterpret, what was achieved in the traditional spirituality of the past. It involves the safe and permanent dismantling of the mind's filter. This amounts to achieving some kind of genuine ascension of the entire human consciousness, no less -- quite beyond anything that many psychics etc seem to be expecting. Somehow, quite a few of us need to take the leap "upwards" into a level where our new-type minds operate very accurately on pure intuition. And I don't mean the skill of making accurate blind guesses like many "New Age" psychic readers do. I mean the type of "mind" that operates daily through things like inspiration that's all coming out of the highest (the buddhic) levels of mind. This will do away with the need for any lower levels of mind to even exist at all. The question is, how are we going to get there -- or when?

TraineeHuman

27th January 2023, 05:40

The more we can learn to see ourselves as deeply being a process rather than a desire-dominated self, or as being naturally quite caught up in such a giant process, the closer we (our soul) will be to complete liberation from bondage.

That, at least, is absolutely the position that's taken by Vedanta / Yoga and also by Zen and the non-magical variety of Taoism, and by Mahayana Buddhism.

That great process is the Divine Big Mind in play, and our desires become transformed into individualized expressions of its all-encompassing will.

This is why I find Whitehead's philosophy of processes (of reality as being all made out of processes) interesting.

Lunesoleil

27th January 2023, 14:23

The Spirituality section of this Forum primarily presents, inevitably, of course, just ideas or thoughts or descriptions about spirituality, rather than any actual direct spiritual experiences.

I just saw that you were born under the sign of Pisces, his modern master entered Pisces definitively in 2012 the year of the beginning of this discussion, there is no coincidence, well done

:wizard:

Ernie Nemeth

17th February 2023, 18:43

I consider Whitehead's 'process' as half the reality of our experience. I call it the 'transitional' phase: the part of the Now that seems to 'move' towards a 'new' moment. But in terms of the Mind, there is no movement - so it is a contradiction.

The other half of the situation I describe as the 'state'.

We seem to flicker between the transition and the state, creating the illusion of movement. This illusory movement I call the 'fundamental momentum'. It is what seems to impart the movement to every phenomena in this reality.

Yet what I believe is actually happening is this: Our 'state' is our natural environment, given us by our Creator. The transition, in this context, is our mistaken belief that reality can be explained and results in our inability to remain still...and whole.

But since we cannot move, because movement is not in our repertoire, we have learned to 'see'. Seeing is a result of 'wanting to understand', instead of simply being content to 'know'.

Understanding is impossible because of our incorrect premise: that we move through a world we don't understand but it must be understandable because it exists.

Thinking is our bane. Thinking takes time, and time is our creation, not God's. The illusion of time allows us to 'move' away or towards ideas and situations in order to give the illusion of choice.

But God gave us a reality, and it is not our prerogative to choose otherwise. There is no choice in the reality we were given, yet we choose contrarily. That choice, that we have no business making, forces us into delusion.

And so the ancients have correctly maintained that humanity went to sleep a long time ago, and has never awoken since...

TraineeHuman

24th February 2023, 09:01

Ernie, here's Thich Nath Hanh's translation of most of the Heart Sutra. I hope it gives you some notion of why (from my experiences) I value emptiness (and hence the "fluidity" and "unfixedness" and so on of process).

"The Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore
Avalokiteshvara
while practicing deeply with
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore,
suddenly discovered that
all of the five Skandhas are equally empty,
and with this realisation
he overcame all Ill-being.

“Listen Sariputra,
this Body itself is Emptiness
and Emptiness itself is this Body.
This Body is not other than Emptiness
and Emptiness is not other than this Body.
The same is true of Feelings,
Perceptions, Mental Formations,
and Consciousness.

“Listen Sariputra,
all phenomena bear the mark of Emptiness;
their true nature is the nature of
no Birth no Death,
no Being no Non-being,
no Defilement no Purity,
no Increasing no Decreasing.

“That is why in Emptiness,
Body, Feelings, Perceptions,
Mental Formations and Consciousness
are not separate self entities.

"The Eighteen Realms of Phenomena
which are the six Sense Organs,
the six Sense Objects,
and the six Consciousnesses
are also not separate self entities.

"The Twelve Links of Interdependent Arising
and their Extinction
are also not separate self entities.
Ill-being, the Causes of Ill-being,
the End of Ill-being, the Path,
insight and attainment,
are also not separate self entities.

"Whoever can see this
no longer needs anything to attain.

"Bodhisattvas who practice
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore
see no more obstacles in their mind,
and because there
are no more obstacles in their mind,
they can overcome all fear,
destroy all wrong perceptions
and realize Perfect Nirvana.

“All Buddhas in the past, present and future
by practicing
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore
are all capable of attaining
Authentic and Perfect Enlightenment.

“Therefore Sariputra,
it should be known that
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore
is a Great Mantra,
the most illuminating mantra,
the highest mantra,
a mantra beyond compare,
the True Wisdom that has the power
to put an end to all kinds of suffering...."

Ernie Nemeth

30th April 2023, 17:49

When contemplating 'process', I like where my mind ends up.

Because it gives a rare insight into a pet concept of mine, the 'unfinished business'.

Could it be that humans in this world are not yet born into reality. Instead, the human condition on earth is in gestation - yet to be born.

And that when we die - we will be born to our true reality - finally fully formed and created as Source intended.

Here we are just zygotes growing, evolving, and becoming in the universal womb of creation...the vesica piscis.

arwen

4th May 2023, 00:57

Apr 30, 2023

Podcast guest 787 is Darius J. Wright, prolific OBE explorer, delving into different dimensions and unlocking the secrets of the unseen realms through the out of body state. With deep insights into the nature of reality, Darius teaches and speaks publicly about accessing the other side and awakening dormant abilities within all of us.

XwDi4Gij9Y4

Ernie Nemeth

5th May 2023, 19:27

Here we are just zygotes growing, evolving, and becoming in the universal womb of creation...the vesica piscis.

Just like a zygote, the human condition is not completed. Until it is, the zygote, like the human condition, is a fetus of its future self. It does not exist as a fully formed functional unit. Were it not for the womb it rests in, it would cease to be.

The sophistication of the human condition is built up from simplistic models that are scalable, much like is the case with the zygote. The cells are differentiated according to function, as are humans.

The human condition is a state. It is not yet ready because human beings have not yet taken on their functions.

Much like the cells in the body of the zygote, human beings are cells that compose the human condition.

Just like the universe of the zygote empties itself of the embryo, and the fetus becomes a functional unit in a totally novel reality, so too does the human being, once the human condition is complete.

The story diverges at this point.

There are two levels to consider: the personal and the interpersonal.

The personal story is the pertinent one because it is the story of you!
The interpersonal one is the exciting one because it is the story of the human family.

The human architecture is an efficient hierarchical structure fully capable of simulating any experience in any realm of existence. It is not the only architecture capable of doing so.

For sake of brevity let's skip to the punchline.

The personal story ends (actually it only truly then begins) when the individual learns the secret of their condition. The human body is a template: head, hands, feet, heart, brain, lungs, etc. These templates are the components required to navigate the realms of reality and experience what is there. The templates have no physicality, but they can have, as they do here on the earthly plane.

We learn to manifest in accordance with our natures but also according to our design parameters. In the physical world we learn with a real body, so as to learn how the component templates interlink and interact.

Once life on earth is complete, we carry with us the memory of physicality and remember how to control our component parts.

With the knowledge of our function and the intimate experience of form, as lifeforms on earth, we can navigate the true reality and all the realms it contains.

Some realms cannot be navigated by a single entity. In those realms we will need to have a body of many souls to endure the hostile environment. This is what the human condition is working toward. A body ensouled by a multitude!

Because the nature of time is such that all things happen at once, these two stories happen at the same time.

Does it sound familiar? It should.
We are both the One and the Many.

P.S. OBEs are another way of getting acquainted with this concept of the 'architecture of the human form'. The body is an idea first. Only after that can it flesh itself out. And only after that can it learn to control the idea of being human and learn how to manifest with intention.