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Thread: Comparative philosophy

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    Avalon Member Pam's Avatar
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    Default Re: Comparative philosophy

    Quote Posted by Ernie Nemeth (here)
    The first fifty or so lessons in ACIM are all about unseeing the 'things' around me. Basically they are all set up as negation, 'Nothing I see means anything', is the very first lesson. So yes, I've done a whole lot of that. It is very disturbing to meditate on the above, for example, because it refutes everything I think I believe. Fifty days straight of it can make one go bonkers. And then the lessons just get more and more difficult.

    These days I am keenly focused on the subtle manipulation by unseen forces, and wondering if they are real or if I am the cause. I suspect I am the cause, but often it is impossible to believe I would do what happens to myself.

    That and the usual assortment of critters constantly underfoot are my concern at this time. The Archons, or bugs, or lesser demons, or whatever one wishes to call them. I do not communicate directly with them, not even sure if they are sentient.

    They are all that's left these days with any interest in me it seems. There's no more communiques from the good side. Of course I did tell them to back off, as I did not trust they had my best interest at heart. I insist now on direct contact with the godhead, which doesn't happen often - only when I need it most.

    I don't expect to see through the veil this time around. Not interested. I figure I purposely had my memory erased for some reason I thought was important when I had all my faculties. Why in the world would I second guess myself in this limited state I find myself in? It seems counter-productive.

    If I'm in the mood, and if I peer just slightly out of focus, I can see through the illusion. I am almost convinced of the fact this world is an illusion of my own demented imagination. There is nothing in this world that is the way I believe it to be, and so there is really no reason to get all worked up about it. And nothing in this world has value beyond the value I place on it. By itself it is not even there.

    I know what I should do, what I am called to do. But it pisses me off that it has come to this. I never expected such a drastic course change/correction to be required of an earnest seeker. I thought it would turn out different. I am grateful for this life and for being allowed to play my own game. I really don't want to play another's, even if that game is the real 'thing'. When I'm dead will be soon enough for me.

    So I am allowed to wander aimlessly through this world, with one foot in and one foot out of the real world. Honestly, it's a nuisance.

    But like they say, once you walk through the door, there's no going back.
    You can't unlearn what has been taught in truth.
    This post holds such profound truth for me. I live alone and have essentially become a hermit due to current circumstances. It allows me to see the power that thoughts have to create a reality. I spent so much of my life with no awareness of this at all. I would only catch it later on if it was so unusual that I had the see the power of thoughts. Now with way fewer distractions and diversions I can see the power thought to create reality. I am also noticing a quickening of the cause-effect relationship.

    In regards to the archons or a new name I have read for them from I believe the Zoroastrian cosmology, the asuras. The critters have so many names, they are tied very closely to the human experience. In my isolation state I absolutely see how they will attack if I allow myself to enter a frequency that they can operate out of. I know this sounds crazy but they seem to be more desperate, more cruel like they have amped up their destructive tendencies. I don't know if it is a single entity or if there are more but they really seem determined to cause me as much harm as possible when I allow myself to indulge certain frequencies. There was a time where I would never admit this to anyone, I don't like to appear to be a nutcase, but I am beyond that now, they have the power to effect the physical realm, or so it appears to me. Maybe I am creating all of this, I don't know exactly how it works. I do now understand that it is so important to monitor my thoughts and pull out when I am going in direction that allows them to interact with me.

    My reality has been so challenged as I spend time observing this reality that I can't help but believe that this is a simulation. It would answer so many questions. I do shake my head and think how on earth did this time line change so dramatically in 2 years?
    How do prophecies work? I could fill a page with questions I have that don't make sense with what I have been programmed to believe.

    Well, I could go on and on. Just wanted to let you know, Ernie, that I so much understand what you have to say, and I appreciate it. I do constantly question bizarre observations and events that happen to me and in the world and I know you are as sane as it gets so I have a bit more confidence that this strange reality is really occurring, how ever that works. Maybe we have progressed to a very high level in a simulation?? Just a thought. Anyway, thank you so much for all your contributions to forum, you are deeply appreciated.

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    Canada Avalon Member Ernie Nemeth's Avatar
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    Default Re: Comparative philosophy

    Philosophy is the only discipline I know of that apart from the requisite of possessing a large volume of data and facts about almost everything, almost anyone can participate on an equal footing. The past philosophies matter not a whit because all humans think the same basic thoughts. There is a reason for this I touched on here and there in this thread that is not the issue here.

    So although, for instance, the span from Kant to Kierkegaard to Sartre was two centuries, the thought train is a continuation of the same idea. All that left the discussion was god, who became existential.

    Much as my own thoughts had to veer away from god in order to love god more fully. In order to get to the meat of the issue I had to first divest myself of my childhood training. That was not easy at all, and very scary. It is not fun to tear oneself away from familiar institutions without feeling, well, guilty and wrong.

    So many years of wandering in the desert, resisting temptation, and staying true to the search. Not easy at all.

    Buddhism came to the rescue in my forties, actually exactly on my fortieth birthday. But that is partly an experiential philosophy and I was not yet ready for that. But I began my yoga training that same week and it would not be long before that discipline would completely overwhelm me and sweep me away.

    Then came the Course In Miracles and I was hooked. It would take years to realize what had happened. By that time I had rejected this world entirely, both the good and the bad. There were only a few things I could not reject, like my daughter, my wife, the innocent, god.

    And yet all must be rejected to cross the bridge of perception to the real world. It was too difficult for me, too alien to my sensibilities. And so, since I couldn't meet the requirements, I was rejected.

    Philosophy is very personal to me. It is not something I pick up and put down as the whim hits me. I live it and breath it and cannot live without it. It is always foremost in my mind.

    I compared philosophies when I was young. The time for comparisons is long over. From what I have found, there are very few, if any, comprehensive philosophies that encompass all the facts at our disposal. Some get bogged down in minutia, some get lost in the translation, others never had the legs to make it to the finish line.

    The only living philosophies with a chance are those that steer us in the right direction. So far, our philosophies have not been up to the challenge. And perhaps people are not yet ready because they are still enamoured by materialism and wealth. These are the guiding principles of our modern lives and they happen to fit with the religion of the day: scientism.

    So long as belief trumps truth, religion will top spirituality. Religion begets dogma. Dogma begets tyranny.

    Spirituality begets freedom. Therefore, spirituality cannot be embraced until freedom is the goal.

    So maybe we should discuss freedom as a philosophical tenet, and its significance?
    Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water...Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend. Bruce Lee

    Free will can only be as free as the mind that conceives it.

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    Default Re: Comparative philosophy

    Your words seem to me to convey deep pain, among other things, Ernie. But also that you're not running away from it.

    There really is a point one can get to where suffering loses its power to "stab" you in any deep way anymore -- or, at worst, only for a moment or so. You still get all sorts of things wrong in big ways, but it no longer matters all that much. My understanding is that this was a very major thing that Krishnamurti and the Buddha and Barry Long and many others were trying to tell people. Not as a theory or a philosophy, but as a reality of their direct experience. I take it this is also what ACIM means by saying that in reality, at a deep enough level, we're already literally in "heaven", and that eventually (in some future, perhaps?) we'll all wake up to that fact.

    Until then, you do whatever you do, and every moment you continue to stay honest with yourself about yourself.

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    Default Re: Comparative philosophy

    Quote Posted by TraineeHuman (here)
    Your words seem to me to convey deep pain, among other things, Ernie. But also that you're not running away from it.

    There really is a point one can get to where suffering loses its power to "stab" you in any deep way anymore -- or, at worst, only for a moment or so. You still get all sorts of things wrong in big ways, but it no longer matters all that much. My understanding is that this was a very major thing that Krishnamurti and the Buddha and Barry Long and many others were trying to tell people. Not as a theory or a philosophy, but as a reality of their direct experience. I take it this is also what ACIM means by saying that in reality, at a deep enough level, we're already literally in "heaven", and that eventually (in some future, perhaps?) we'll all wake up to that fact.

    Until then, you do whatever you do, and every moment you continue to stay honest with yourself about yourself.
    "we're already literally in "heaven", and that eventually (in some future, perhaps?) we'll all wake up to that fact."

    Jesus entered into this Truth by remaining in it ....

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    Canada Avalon Member Ernie Nemeth's Avatar
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    Default Re: Comparative philosophy

    Thanks TH.

    My underlying problem is this: I spent my entire life delving into philosophical ideation, I did not ever imagine a philosophy could be and must be lived. And since I had been trained almost completely wrong, I had to unlearn much of what I had thought I'd already learned, just to participate.

    The question is: How can I overcome my early training, without risking an entire psychological breakdown? That is the minefield I walk through daily.

    So I live two different lives. In the one I am a zombie going through the motions of life, unmoved and uninterested. In the other I am in tune waiting for guidance. If I am called I heed the call. I do the work I am directed to do, no less and no more. (I often wonder, who are these souls I am called on to minister to, that they can receive healing from an unhealed healer?)

    I no longer ask for or expect anything for myself.

    My goal was to find the truth. I never expected to have to live it.
    Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water...Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend. Bruce Lee

    Free will can only be as free as the mind that conceives it.

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    Default Re: Comparative philosophy

    If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”
    Last edited by mozo33; 22nd November 2021 at 20:02.

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    Default Re: Comparative philosophy

    Philosophy is nice and all but I feel like it has lost all ability to aid me. Words and words and words... This video speaks to me


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    Default Re: Comparative philosophy

    Joshi was one of the most famous and highly regarded of the Zen masters. According to him, the insight, the light, that any one of us can gain from any great being's or ideology's words will altogether depend on the profundity and the purity and the breadth of our own quest. We all need to ask (at least ourselves) the deepest questions. And indulge our consciousness to be in love with and somehow always in touch with the deepest depths, that are always present with us, for those with eyes to see and with their higher "feelings" open. That is what true philosophy is the love of, regardless of East and West.

    Whenever we do choose to keep within the realm of the sayable, we need to ask the biggest and most far-reaching questions regarding the truth of the world around us and what possibilities are coming in over its horizons, at various different levels. That involves the use of certain philosophical skills, such as conceptual analysis, but also keeping our consciousness whole, and constantly looking rather than just thinking. We only learn to do this by starting from what is near and familiar, but then, while remaining pure, by expanding, both inwardly and in our outward discernment and perception. Philosophy shouldn't be focused on the meanings of words, but on the beauty and impact of the most profound or true expressions of meaning in itself.
    Above all, always refuse to cut your life in two: nonduality/duality, matter/Spirit, etc
    A mind which is not crippled by memory has real freedom. ~ J. Krishnamurti
    (True, deep) stillness is the way.

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    Default Re: Comparative philosophy

    have U read Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One by Joe Dispenza Dr.
    https://book4you.org/book/2285192/b79a58 ?

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    Default Re: Comparative philosophy

    That sounds like it's a book about how one might reprogram one's own mind/personality/self-concept/etc. Psychology
    originated in Eastern cultures quite a few centuries ago, and didn't officially begin in its more modern form in
    the West until the late nineteenth century with William James and the twentieth century with Freud. Freud got the
    whole notion of the "unconscious" or the "subconscious", among other things, from ancient Eastern writings.

    The branch of modern psychology into which the ideas and methods of the book you refer to would fall is known as
    cognitive-behavioral therapy. However, in this age of AIs and robotization, are you sure you really want to make
    yourself in a certain sense substantially more like an AI? Similar psychotherapeutic approaches to this were indeed
    invented in ancient Eastern psychology, but over time the orientation of the Eastern methods became more and more
    transpersonal and humanistic and existential.

    One thing about the Eastern approaches that blew me away was the way the psychological concepts were formulated so
    that they dovetail perfectly with the metaphysical (the spiritual) concepts, and also with the concepts relating to
    spiritual practice, both in the monastery and in real life.

    Another mind-blowing fact, I believe, is that Japan never had any insane asylums or similar institutions until the
    early 1980s. Instead, they relied on the Zen monasteries. And this was because apparently the Zen masters
    were masters at improving the mental health of what in the West used to be called "insane" people (but today,
    thank goodness, is known as people with a mood disorder).

    The Zen masters were also famous for achieving extraordinary therapeutic breakthroughs with such individuals.

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