Hi My Name Is Aaron And Im A Christian How Are You Today/nite/morning/afternoon?

[Antlerman]

I guess I missed the part in this thread where a moderator said, "Believe what I believe or you are banned!"

 

One doesn't seriously insult the boss over drinks Friday night if he has to face him Monday morning.

Around here, that's entirely in your own imagination.

[asanerman]

In my wildest imaginings could I have guessed the direction of this forum!

 

I'm reminded of something a mentor of mine wrote:

 

Health depends upon the conviction that our actions count.

I remain potent only so long as I get feedback which demonstrates that the force of my action is felt.

 

When I cast my stone into the water, I must be able to see the waves radiate outward. If I remain in my

solitariness, I am denied the knowledge of the resonance of my actions, as well as the joy of knowing

my gifts are received and appreciated.

 

If my being and my doing are to be reconciled, If I am to be responsible in my action, I must discover that part

of my identity which only a We, a community can guarantee. ~Sam Keen

 

Early on Aman you mention "peer review."

 

Do I miss the point of that idea/notion when I understand the content and process of this thread as a functional definition of "peer review,"--on a multitude of levels?

 

"Striving for perfection, for immortality, for conformity to an image of what I should be is idolatry. I have no need of salvation. Therefore I am set free to change." (ibid)

 

I don't know if that gives you cause for celebration, but it sure as hell gives me cause!

 

I never knew that being a reprobate could be so divine!

[Antlerman]

Know this, anyone pursuing an alternate path of whatever makes them feel whole, I do not discourage or begrudge them that. To clarify the experiences being personal and "in your mind" is not a put down. I did this too as a christian so I know from personal experience how real this seems and becomes a personal reality. But my personal experiences did not and do not reflect reality for the common man. Each person's journey in life is unique and we find folk that think alike and folk that don't.

 

The many ways folk interpret their god (who is supposed to be the same) brought me to the conclusion it is all in the head and made up, even though whatever they experience is real to them. I looked into alternate paths and found the results to be the same, mostly self induced and for my part, unnecessary. I compare it to that mysterious "god shaped vacuum/hole" we are supposed to have but that hole is non existent in me anyway.

I appreciate the points you raise here and they make for a good discussion point between us. I'd prefer to talk to this as a couple of guys who have had our own similar roads and thoughts in our personal journeys beyond the strong arms of religious dictators into the freedom of self discovery. Consider this a discussion over a few enjoyable beers, or several more if you like. We can just speak of ourselves, and less about debating theories. Hell, we're all trying to figure this out.

 

I should clarify to you at the outset that even if I argue a certain point in how I think about something or experience it, believe me I'm not trying to argue it makes some case for some overall truth that we must believe in because our eternal destinies depend on it. Hardly. I view all of this as inner truth for us to discover. I personally do believe there is things we all share in common, if for no other reason that we are all genetically 99% identical. We have the same two parents according to DNA research, grant it, they lived something like 60,000 years apart, but still the point is made. We are all part of this ecosystem, this world, this universe. We are creations of the processes of evolution that drives all that is, all we experience. So yes, we will share very much common threads in our lives. You LL, are for all intents and purposes my brother. All humans are our mothers and daughters, fathers and sons. We pump the same blood, breathe the same air, stare in amazement together at the night sky. Our souls are one.

 

So as to self-induced realities. I know what you are talking about, and it is something that I did as well. In my practices within the Pentecostal church I found myself in, I found it a type of system of 'pumping you up' emotionally and cognitively to 'believe' something that generated various positive emotions. I would try to lift myself up from whatever downer was going on, finding a certain mental boost through a belief in whatever - Jesus promises reward; belief that God answers prayer; hold the faith; etc. Making a very long story incredibly short, obviously when I began to see all the structures of those beliefs were founded on crap, it most definitely had an impact on the entire basis for all those mentally induced hopes that generated positive emotions. How can those be possibly valid experiences when they are nothing other than mental manipulations. Sound about right?

 

In my years following my exist from their mental molding factories, dealing with a long period of depression following a painful divorce and my son being moved 2000 miles away from me, in seeking out some help to keep me from sinking into the hole of despair I spoke one time with a psychologist who exposed me to what is known as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy through a highly regarded self-help book (Feeling Good, the New Mood Therapy, by Dr. David Burns). Through that I found immediate help to pull me out of the crap hole I was in being separated from my son by such unbearable distance. Though that I began to understand a bit about how the mind works: Thoughts precede emotions, creating them like a caboose following a train engine. The experience of emotions server to validate the cognitive thought, which reinforces the emotion further, which validates the thought further, and around and around the spiral of despair ensue.

 

Fast forward another 20 years. To say the least, I recognize how we can tell ourselves something is true when the reality of it can be a complete lie. Believe me, I understand this quite well. This is in fact how I today look at what religious belief in fact is about for the vast majority of people. They tell themselves everything will be OK, God is watching out for them, and it makes them feel better. I more than fully get that. I am like you in saying it is far better to face the cold hard truth of reality than to try to fool ourselves with some lie, simply to try to avoid pain. That only goes to create a conflict between our reasoning mind and our emotional selves. In fact, I'll further that to say it creates all manner of internal dissociation, we repress our selves, create anxieties and neuroses, etc. It can be psychologically unhealthy.

 

Where I am at right now in the things I attempt feebly to talk about are not that. It is not based in a cognitive thought. It is not belief in an idea, a hope, a god, a savior, an ideal, a vision, a new method, a new promise, etc, etc, etc. It seriously is simply an entire shift of mind, though deep, deep introspection. For me the best way to attempt to describe it is the difference between believing and envisioning what a wonderful place Italy must be, and actually fucking going there. The "there" is actually simply "yourself". That self, that is as I began this, that person who is you, all others, the blood, the heart, the breath, the life that courses through us all. It's touching that full-faced in our own experience. It's direct experience, not feel-good emotions through beliefs. It becomes just simple knowledge from actual experience.

 

None of this, and I mean none of this means there is some sky-god of some religion here or there really out there just like it says in their myths. Not at all. In fact you learn that the myths are really just tools, vehicles to help people move themselves out of themselves just far enough to see something about themselves they've never seen before. That's what Archetypes are. They are something we sense about ourselves and create symbolically as an object to look on, through we we transcend the object altogether into an actual realization. It's the fact of our being itself in the magnificent, mind blowing system of the universe, with you and me together looking at it and ourselves as it. Amazing.

 

I had one metaphor I thought of earlier today to try to describe the experience of that somewhat. Imagine seeing a small, delicate hummingbird. It has beauty in its form; its colors, its wings, its rapidly beating heart. Now imagine you were able to see into it. Not into its guts and bones, but into its essence. Seeing deeply beyond all that into the animating life itself. You see the power a trillion suns burning, yet controlled in the inconceivable gentleness of its frail and meager body you see before you. That's who we all are.

 

There's some fuel for thought as your pour yourself another beer.

[mymistake]

I really don't care that LL and AM got into a rude flame war. If they want to post profanity at each other that is their business. However I did read the messages and in my opinion at no point was AM using his position as a mod nor abusing that position. Since I have been here last year I have never seen AM abuse his power. I approve of the way the moderating is done around here. Now a number of mods do offer opinion as forum members. The only complaint I have about that is that we are not allowed to give them +1's when they say something that needs a +1.

[Thumbelina]

However I did read the messages and in my opinion at no point was AM using his position as a mod nor abusing that position. Since I have been here last year I have never seen AM abuse his power.

 

Agree Wow, the first time I agreed with MM!

[Antlerman]

Holy crap! Thumbelina! What an unexpected entrance.

[Thumbelina]

Holy crap! Thumbelina! What an unexpected entrance.

 

 

You're a nice mod so I give credit where credit is due but I ain't joining the controversy.

[blackpudd1n]

I really don't care that LL and AM got into a rude flame war. If they want to post profanity at each other that is their business. However I did read the messages and in my opinion at no point was AM using his position as a mod nor abusing that position. Since I have been here last year I have never seen AM abuse his power. I approve of the way the moderating is done around here. Now a number of mods do offer opinion as forum members. The only complaint I have about that is that we are not allowed to give them +1's when they say something that needs a +1.

 

Now that I have sufficiently calmed down and regained some equilibrium, I'm going to respond to this, to clarify what got me so worked up in the first place.

 

I hold moderators to a higher standard. Perhaps I am wrong in doing so. But I was greatly upset by the shit fight, because it made me wonder how I could trust A-Man to be a moderator when a slinging match was going on. How was I meant to bring to him a concern that I had, and trust his judgement? Not only that, but how the hell was I meant to know when he had his moderator's cap on and when he didn't? I got very confused, and I really hate being confused. I absolutely hate not knowing where I stand.

 

Not only that, and I do hate to admit this, but my gender came into the equation, too. I was indoctrinated from birth that men were superior, to respect my elders, not question them, everything like that. So there I was, wanting to say something, and feeling completely unable to, because I felt intimidated because I am female, younger, a member where A-Man is a moderator, and so utterly confused by A-Man's terms, that I also felt incredibly stupid. I was also upset because I didn't even understand these derogative labels he assigned to atheists such as reductionist and materialist. Looking up reductionist on Wikipedia, and finding an article I could not make heads or tails of only further fuelled the great inadequacy I was already feeling. Not only that, but I no-longer felt that I could trust A-Man, and trust is a big deal for me.

 

So, I ended up very confused, very upset by my confusion, hurt, feeling insecure and inadequate, and fearful of opening my mouth. And suddenly, as I sat and wracked my brain for an intelligent way to say what I wanted to say, it all came to a head and I erupted. It may not have been my fight, but it affected me deeply. It made me feel like a scared little 4-year-old again, cowering from my enraged mother as she laid into my sister. For some reason, it triggered a trauma response in me, and I think it had a lot to do with feeling very confused to begin with. I never knew where I stood as a child, and as the discussion distintegrated between a member and a moderator, the authority figure in my mind, a reaction was triggered. I feel so silly and stupid for saying that, but that is where my outburst came from.

[Antlerman]

Thanks for sharing this BP. I appreciate knowing where that was coming from for you. I'm not an authority on ultimate truth. No one is. I'm just walking my road like you are. And as far as the male thing goes, actually between masculine and feminine qualities go, which have nothing to do with gender or sexuality, I have far more feminine qualities than masculine. Always have. The beauty of this site is the freedom to explore our paths. I'm on mine like you are on yours. I'm just doing what I can in my own way to help the community be true to its purpose. I'm far from perfect in my humanity.

[Guest end3]

I guess I missed the part in this thread where a moderator said, "Believe what I believe or you are banned!"

 

One doesn't seriously insult the boss over drinks Friday night if he has to face him Monday morning.

 

Now wait, Hans has said to me, believe what I tell you or you will be banned.....

[midniterider]

I guess I missed the part in this thread where a moderator said, "Believe what I believe or you are banned!"

 

One doesn't seriously insult the boss over drinks Friday night if he has to face him Monday morning.

 

True, though people are probably less afraid of tangling with a moderator of a web forum than being fired from their job. :-) Unless their boss WAS the moderator of the web forum..hmmm.

 

Regarding atheists, even though I aren't one I've learned a lot more about Christianity and how to apply logic and why I should question everything....from atheists than I ever learned from church members while I was Christian. I thought I was pretty well versed in 'the bible' until I came here and discovered I knew nothing. lol.

[par4dcourse]

We haven't had End to pick on, that's been the problem then.

[LivingLife]

I appreciate the points you raise here and they make for a good discussion point between us. I'd prefer to talk to this as a couple of guys who have had our own similar roads and thoughts in our personal journeys beyond the strong arms of religious dictators into the freedom of self discovery. Consider this a discussion over a few enjoyable beers, or several more if you like. We can just speak of ourselves, and less about debating theories. Hell, we're all trying to figure this out.

 

I should clarify to you at the outset that even if I argue a certain point in how I think about something or experience it, believe me I'm not trying to argue it makes some case for some overall truth that we must believe in because our eternal destinies depend on it.

 

This is a key statement and when I started reading I thought here we go again, one day I will reach a point where I "see" what you see, I am just not ready yet. TBH earlier posts came across like this and it frustrated me taking to these uber spiritual folk as the concept was "I am just not there yet" or " I am where I have to be at this juncture" while offering no explanation whatsoever. Perhaps I connected dots where there weren't any.

 

Hardly. I view all of this as inner truth for us to discover.

But then you say this. What is this inner truth? This IMO alludes to the same supposition the xians use with their god shaped vacuum, soul etc. They invent an construct that is not real, sell that and then build a whole truth™ around that.

 

This is the type of language that makes your beliefs look so awfully familiar. How about;

 

I

view

believe all of this as inner truth for us to discover.

 

One word makes all the difference in ensuring we are talking supposition instead of reality, I hope you see my point here.

I personally do believe there is things we all share in common, if for no other reason that we are all genetically 99% identical. We have the same two parents according to DNA research, grant it, they lived something like 60,000 years apart, but still the point is made. We are all part of this ecosystem, this world, this universe. We are creations of the processes of evolution that drives all that is, all we experience. So yes, we will share very much common threads in our lives. You LL, are for all intents and purposes my brother. All humans are our mothers and daughters, fathers and sons. We pump the same blood, breathe the same air, stare in amazement together at the night sky. Our souls are one.

Agreed but again I would word it as; all humanity is one.... Soul has baggage. The same can be said for the "enlightened" folk that claim nature is god. (not a strawman just an example) Nature is nature and needs no redefinition, likewise love is love and needs no redefinition.

 

A slight sidetrack here - mostly what I see with theists is that the accepted emotional concepts or nature (when the audience is scientific illiterate) seems complex and then they build around these new definitions and make shit up based on redefined words, aka bait and switch.

So as to self-induced realities. I know what you are talking about, and it is something that I did as well. In my practices within the Pentecostal church I found myself in, I found it a type of system of 'pumping you up' emotionally and cognitively to 'believe' something that generated various positive emotions. I would try to lift myself up from whatever downer was going on, finding a certain mental boost through a belief in whatever - Jesus promises reward; belief that God answers prayer; hold the faith; etc. Making a very long story incredibly short, obviously when I began to see all the structures of those beliefs were founded on crap, it most definitely had an impact on the entire basis for all those mentally induced hopes that generated positive emotions. How can those be possibly valid experiences when they are nothing other than mental manipulations. Sound about right?

Yes, but what I experienced was "real". That was the hardest part of the deconversion to deal with, it is these experiences that keep you hooked until you discover that the mind is capable of many things and makes stuff real.

In my years following my exist from their mental molding factories, dealing with a long period of depression following a painful divorce and my son being moved 2000 miles away from me, in seeking out some help to keep me from sinking into the hole of despair I spoke one time with a psychologist who exposed me to what is known as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy through a highly regarded self-help book (Feeling Good, the New Mood Therapy, by Dr. David Burns). Through that I found immediate help to pull me out of the crap hole I was in being separated from my son by such unbearable distance. Though that I began to understand a bit about how the mind works:

Now this is a good example of experiential projection. My life has been different to yours. Please see this as positive criticism rather than oneupmanship.

 

I for one cannot know what divorce or separation from loved ones (while alive) must feel like. Perhaps (in my case) I learned early on in life not to open myself up too soon (surrender all) and thus learned to get over hurt quicker, obviously this is not the same as having a kid taken away from you.

Thoughts precede emotions, creating them like a caboose following a train engine. The experience of emotions server to validate the cognitive thought, which reinforces the emotion further, which validates the thought further, and around and around the spiral of despair ensue.

Depression was only a thing I suffered from as a mid teen and that was due to an overactive thyroid, knowing when it is happening one learns to focus and get over it. Perhaps I am more hyper analytical than you are and work things out to a conclusion using nothing more than rationality

Fast forward another 20 years. To say the least, I recognize how we can tell ourselves something is true when the reality of it can be a complete lie. Believe me, I understand this quite well. This is in fact how I today look at what religious belief in fact is about for the vast majority of people. They tell themselves everything will be OK, God is watching out for them, and it makes them feel better. I more than fully get that. I am like you in saying it is far better to face the cold hard truth of reality than to try to fool ourselves with some lie, simply to try to avoid pain.

That is me in a nutshell

 

Cont..

[LivingLife]

That only goes to create a conflict between our reasoning mind and our emotional selves. In fact, I'll further that to say it creates all manner of internal dissociation, we repress our selves, create anxieties and neuroses, etc. It can be psychologically unhealthy.

Here I have to disagree. Too many assumptions and I think I have explained how I learned early in life to deal with this. Perhaps I was lucky to separate the two and keep them separate.

 

A quick example here from my past. I had a GF who was 3-1/2 years older than me and was the type of girl that made your buddies jealous. We dated for 7 months and then out of the blue, nothing was wrong, she broke up with me. That hurt like hell. At the time I was 23 and she was 27. I was not ready to settle down, that came only 5 years later. I carried this hurt for a long while till I realised she wanted to settle down, I was in no position to care for her as a wife and as such had not even broached the subject of marriage. She had to find a mate older, ready to settle down and address her biological clock.

 

That experience and mulling it over was how I dealt with the emotional side and got over it. We did love each other and even long after the break up, would see each other and have consensual sex knowing that this was going no further than that. I eventually resigned my job as we worked for the same company, and that allowed me to move on. In retrospect, that relationship was going nowhere long term and would not have lasted even if I had proposed. I was not mentally mature. I just got up on the horse and started dating other girls, I never battled in that regard, I do have an extrovert personality.

 

We deal with emotions and reality differently.

Where I am at right now in the things I attempt feebly to talk about are not that. It is not based in a cognitive thought. It is not belief in an idea, a hope, a god, a savior, an ideal, a vision, a new method, a new promise, etc, etc, etc. It seriously is simply an entire shift of mind, though deep, deep introspection. For me the best way to attempt to describe it is the difference between believing and envisioning what a wonderful place Italy must be, and actually fucking going there. The "there" is actually simply "yourself". That self, that is as I began this, that person who is you, all others, the blood, the heart, the breath, the life that courses through us all. It's touching that full-faced in our own experience. It's direct experience, not feel-good emotions through beliefs. It becomes just simple knowledge from actual experience.

Perhaps my biggest loss was losing my country. That loss far outweighs any GF or the like as a whole part of your history and being and growing up gone because of circumstances outside of your control, flight to safety in fear of retribution, my beloved Rhodesia now a fucked up once jewel Zimbabwe. Life there was simple and there was no class distinction. We as the youth mixed with the races and would probably have become great elders in society.

 

Uprooted and now a foreigner in various lands, we collectively missed out on sharing our childhood memories with our kids outside of pics and stories.

 

Imagine being forced to leave your town and state and never really being able to return with a modicum of safety ever. I served in intelligence and we were trained in the art of torture. Although I personally never got to apply my skills, our records were ceremoniously destroyed and we were advised to go elsewhere asap.

 

In that scenario, relationships did not have a long term expectancy, everything was deemed temporary. Perhaps that too led to my being dumped by that GF as that relationship happened the first year here in SA.

None of this, and I mean none of this means there is some sky-god of some religion here or there really out there just like it says in their myths. Not at all. In fact you learn that the myths are really just tools, vehicles to help people move themselves out of themselves just far enough to see something about themselves they've never seen before. That's what Archetypes are. They are something we sense about ourselves and create symbolically as an object to look on, through we we transcend the object altogether into an actual realization. It's the fact of our being itself in the magnificent, mind blowing system of the universe, with you and me together looking at it and ourselves as it. Amazing.

We differ here. Personal realities are circumstantial. Depending on circumstance(s), myths IMO are mere deflections from reality. Face your demons head on.

 

Another example of growing up in Brit culture, we could jibe and belittle each other and take and give it as we felt like doing w/o taking offence. Add an American into the company and they are insulted. There were Americans in Rhodesia too. We hung out in codependent mixed crowds of 10+ couples and not in anyway romantically involved. You could quite easily have slept with two or more girls in the crowd and still be part of the crowd. The group was more important than the individual(s) or pairings that happened from time to time. That culture was not really religious. Perhaps being a late teen early 20something in a time of war when life expectancy was not guaranteed, ambushes, land mines etc. you lived life to its fullest on a daily basis.

I had one metaphor I thought of earlier today to try to describe the experience of that somewhat. Imagine seeing a small, delicate hummingbird. It has beauty in its form; its colors, its wings, its rapidly beating heart. Now imagine you were able to see into it. Not into its guts and bones, but into its essence. Seeing deeply beyond all that into the animating life itself. You see the power a trillion suns burning, yet controlled in the inconceivable gentleness of its frail and meager body you see before you. That's who we all are.

Again this is where we differ, see a hummingbird, admire the colours and the way it hovers and am amazed at how it evolved to be what it is. I would take a photograph for posterity or a video if I had them readily available to capture the moment.

 

You see moments are fleeting and I have perhaps learned to appreciate them for what they are due to my circumstances.

There's some fuel for thought as your pour yourself another beer.

Thanks for opening up more, I have done likewise. You have a unique way of dealing with the realities of life and perhaps find solace in mental constructs outside of common reality. My way works too but probably not for you.

 

We did share a common con to the woo of xianity and we both may have similar experiences and the reasons for our being conned were likely different personal vulnerabilities at the time.

 

The way I see folk that need alternate paths of enlightenment/spirituality is (broad brush) that so much time and effort was invested into the xian lifestyle and when this is dissed, some still feel there is something missing. We are faced with this brick wall of our mortality and may feel we lose purpose in life and some need to overcome this and remove that wall. Other paths may offer this in stuff like reincarnation.

 

As you said earlier in your own words, I prefer to face that wall and realise there is no way past that, I have dealt with it and know there is nothing you or I or anyone can do to change that. Life is finite but is does not have to suck. Life is what you make of it.

 

Maybe I am the kind of person that holds up a shiny mirror to folk and they do not like what they see.

 

There is definitely huge differences between your cultural norms and mine. The religious experience here is a very personal thing and only a few folk wear it on their sleeve. I try to inject a bit of SA into the conversations and try and open folks eyes to the fact we do not all see the world from one POV. TBH, the only folk I have met here that follow Buddhism are Asians. The folk brought Hinduism, Islam from the east when their forefathers were imported as cheap semi skilled labourers. As such we have had a tolerance for multiplicity of beliefs for so long it is a norm in the culture. The only ones that differ are those that have been sucked into the American evangelical memes and they are all dicks and emanate exactly what you guys see there in the US. The more traditional reformed churches are not in your face and their stuff is more cultural than spiritual.

 

If I never experienced the woo from American styled xianity, I would not be here and probably would still have had some vague belief in a deity/afterlife. They sound soooo convincing but it is all smoke and mirrors and showmanship and there really is no substance.

 

When I read the extimonies here, most are thinkers and could not enter/sustain a worldview of cognitive dissonance.

 

At the end of the day, truth is very subjective. Reality however is not subjective other than circumstances you are born into.

 

Sorry for the TLDR post. In RL this would be three beers and by now we would be flirting with the waitresses

[♦ ficino ♦]

I personally do believe there is things we all share in common, if for no other reason that we are all genetically 99% identical. We have the same two parents according to DNA research, grant it, they lived something like 60,000 years apart, but still the point is made. We are all part of this ecosystem, this world, this universe. We are creations of the processes of evolution that drives all that is, all we experience. So yes, we will share very much common threads in our lives. You LL, are for all intents and purposes my brother. All humans are our mothers and daughters, fathers and sons. We pump the same blood, breathe the same air, stare in amazement together at the night sky. Our souls are one.

 

The "there" is actually simply "yourself". That self, that is as I began this, that person who is you, all others, the blood, the heart, the breath, the life that courses through us all. It's touching that full-faced in our own experience. It's direct experience, not feel-good emotions through beliefs. It becomes just simple knowledge from actual experience.

 

That's what Archetypes are. They are something we sense about ourselves and create symbolically as an object to look on, through we we transcend the object altogether into an actual realization.

 

I had one metaphor I thought of earlier today to try to describe the experience of that somewhat. Imagine seeing a small, delicate hummingbird. It has beauty in its form; its colors, its wings, its rapidly beating heart. Now imagine you were able to see into it. Not into its guts and bones, but into its essence.

 

Hello A-man and LL, thanks for the recent exchanges. I understand better where you guys are coming from.

 

Antlerman, I excerpted some of your recent post above.

 

I had wondered whether you were using experiences achieved in meditation and/or other mental/psychic states as evidence for the truth of propositions like "your Self is everything." Now my understanding is that those experiences and the pattern they bring to your life are immensely enhancing, AND that you have metaphysical positions that come from a philosophical tradition. I understand that you DON'T claim that your experiences establish the truth of a metaphysical position that I would characterize as a kind of monism, but that perhaps you accept the position on other grounds and use it to help interpret your experiences.

 

I also understand that your use of language heavily exploits the resources of metaphor, as you intimate above. So when you say things like "our souls are one," this is both a reflection of your monistic metaphysics and on another level is a metaphor. Since that statement requires so much unpacking, its truth is not directly evident in your inner experience.

 

I may misunderstand when I attribute monism to you. Please correct if so.

 

I'm interested in your use of the notion of archetype in light of your metaphor of seeing the hummingbird's "essence." I'm not sure how you mean essence. If the archetype is a model or symbol of elements of our experience (e.g. The Animal Friend, The Wise Woman), is the essence too a model, and if so, of what? An essence implies a universal, no? Could we take the essence of the hummingbird as all the information that makes it a unique species? If so, it's perceived by the intellect - as in the anecdote, when Antisthenes said to Plato, "I see a horse but I do not see Horseness," Plato replied, "that's because you do not have the eyes to see Horseness," i.e. he did not have the intellectual capacity to understand a Form. Without postulating separated universals, it seems valid to me to think of essences as grasped by the intellect and potentially available to anyone to reach via reason. I don't know how transrationality gets us any closer.

 

I think a problem with heavy emphasis on the oneness of all things is to give an account of ethics that preserves the integrity of the individual person. This is a problem I have with what I understand is a buddhistic view of the person - i.e. is basically annihilates "person" by deeming it merely a construct, and holding that in reality, there is no self, just a sort of stream going by. In that case, I think a neighborhood watch guy shooting an unarmed teenager is simply an instance or ephemeral event in the stream - put another way, it's one way the absolute interacts with itself. Where is the wrongness or rightness in actions between persons if there really are no persons, so therefore, no possessors of rights and responsibilities?

[owen652]

I'd love to see you two guys do a cooking show together.

 

"You know the souffle is caramelised when it starts to bubble..."

"Caramelisation is purely subjective."

"Fuck you."

"Fuck you too."

"Look, I'm sorry I got angry."

"You are my soulbrother."

"Fuck you."

[Thought2Much]

I'd love to see you two guys do a cooking show together.

 

"You know the souffle is caramelised when it starts to bubble..."

"Caramelisation is purely subjective."

"Fuck you."

"Fuck you too."

"Look, I'm sorry I got angry."

"You are my soulbrother."

"Fuck you."

 

[Antlerman]

I personally do believe there is things we all share in common, if for no other reason that we are all genetically 99% identical. We have the same two parents according to DNA research, grant it, they lived something like 60,000 years apart, but still the point is made. We are all part of this ecosystem, this world, this universe. We are creations of the processes of evolution that drives all that is, all we experience. So yes, we will share very much common threads in our lives. You LL, are for all intents and purposes my brother. All humans are our mothers and daughters, fathers and sons. We pump the same blood, breathe the same air, stare in amazement together at the night sky. Our souls are one.

 

The "there" is actually simply "yourself". That self, that is as I began this, that person who is you, all others, the blood, the heart, the breath, the life that courses through us all. It's touching that full-faced in our own experience. It's direct experience, not feel-good emotions through beliefs. It becomes just simple knowledge from actual experience.

 

That's what Archetypes are. They are something we sense about ourselves and create symbolically as an object to look on, through we we transcend the object altogether into an actual realization.

 

I had one metaphor I thought of earlier today to try to describe the experience of that somewhat. Imagine seeing a small, delicate hummingbird. It has beauty in its form; its colors, its wings, its rapidly beating heart. Now imagine you were able to see into it. Not into its guts and bones, but into its essence.

 

Hello A-man and LL, thanks for the recent exchanges. I understand better where you guys are coming from.

 

Antlerman, I excerpted some of your recent post above.

 

I had wondered whether you were using experiences achieved in meditation and/or other mental/psychic states as evidence for the truth of propositions like "your Self is everything." Now my understanding is that those experiences and the pattern they bring to your life are immensely enhancing, AND that you have metaphysical positions that come from a philosophical tradition. I understand that you DON'T claim that your experiences establish the truth of a metaphysical position that I would characterize as a kind of monism, but that perhaps you accept the position on other grounds and use it to help interpret your experiences.

Yes to this. And by accept, I don't at all mean I accept it as some sort of Gospel Truth, the Rock of my Faith, sort of business. They are not foundational to experience at all. They are free to be molded and modified, rejected and replaced. For me what happens is in personal direct experience within those places freed from all conceptual reality through the practice of contemplation, what arises to me, from within me, is the knowledge itself. From there, the rest is ways to try to describe what is exposed, what is experienced. This why I am making the statement it is not a product of a belief in anything, nor some sort of mental creation of 'positive thoughts' where you 'think' yourself into happiness. On the contrary, it's from the place of deliberately engaging in "no thoughts".

 

The purpose for the metaphysics then is simply to be able to process them with our thinking side of our brains, our verbal centers of modeling reality to us. They aren't anything that anyone can find by looking at the material world. They are symbolic realities of transcendent experience; and by transcendent I mean not seated in cognitive thoughts. Those symbols are anything but static facts like you investigate in the material world. They are at best flickering shadows. That's why you cannot apply reason to establish them as 'true or false'. They are false. They are not what they reflect.

 

I also understand that your use of language heavily exploits the resources of metaphor, as you intimate above.

Oh hell yeah.

 

So when you say things like "our souls are one," this is both a reflection of your monistic metaphysics and on another level is a metaphor. Since that statement requires so much unpacking, its truth is not directly evident in your inner experience.

Its truth is not knowable outside direct experience. Here's the key, the closer you get to what is beyond those shadows what you encounter is paradox. It cannot exist in a dualistic reality. It is both life and death and neither. And so forth. If you try to comprehend it with reason, you won't. You can't because to be able to use reason you have to define it in dualistic terms: this and not that. If you define any 'not that', then it is no longer truth. It can only be spoken of in dualistic terms, which is not that.

 

OK, that isn't following my vow to keep it simple. Bottom line, it cannot be described. It has to be directly apprehended beyond using reason. Reason is incapable of penetrating into that space. I speak this from a place of experience. To begin to penetrate into this as I'm describing, one of the first things I remarked about the experience of it was saying, "it's like getting 'two whole brains laid on top of each other". Off the top of my head, you could describe it like "cognition-plus". Others use the term 'supermind' or 'overmind'. I get what that means. (That doesn't at all mean that you're 'smarter', by the way).

 

I may misunderstand when I attribute monism to you. Please correct if so.

I'm not so sure where I'd fit into the range of what is called monism. I would say I'm a nondualist. There's lots of ways to try to talk about where I'm at right now. My favorite way of describing my thoughts right now is what came to me a few months ago. "I am all religions. I am none". There's a lot of layers to that if you wish to poke at it.

 

I'm interested in your use of the notion of archetype in light of your metaphor of seeing the hummingbird's "essence." I'm not sure how you mean essence. If the archetype is a model or symbol of elements of our experience (e.g. The Animal Friend, The Wise Woman), is the essence too a model, and if so, of what? An essence implies a universal, no?

Yes, the essence is the absolute, well no, maybe more the brilliance of the absolute. When we pull back all forms what you see is raw essence. Formlessness before form. You want to know my metaphysics, that describe it. We are radiant energy in sacks of skin.

 

Where archetypes come into this is they are symbolic representation of that higher realization of what I described just now. They become objects that the mind visualizes, and subsequently identifies with until a point of true self recognition emerges - we are that. That essence is known, and we are that. Our eyes open and we are that.

 

I love the way the mystic Meister Ekhart put some words to it (which amongst other things got him ex-communicated), "God beyond God". How I would express that from my experience is that "God" is a face we put upon the infinite. It is a form of our self coming into contact with the formless beyond. Staring into that Face, so to speak is terrifying. Utterly terrifying. It is the utter end of your self. Then there is release into that Void and I describe it as "heaven dissolves. "Heaven is no more". God becomes us. There is only This, and we are That." As I said, no words describe it. Someone else puts it I-I. You don't cease to be "you", but your unique identity is now merged and awakened in your true Nature - that radiant identity - that simple, infinite source of all that is.

 

You're asking questions that I can't put in easy rational terms. These are highly symbolic expressions.

 

continued....

[Antlerman]

continuing....

 

Could we take the essence of the hummingbird as all the information that makes it a unique species?

No, it's essence is the essence of all that is. It's essence and ours, all that is, is one.

 

If so, it's perceived by the intellect - as in the anecdote, when Antisthenes said to Plato, "I see a horse but I do not see Horseness," Plato replied, "that's because you do not have the eyes to see Horseness," i.e. he did not have the intellectual capacity to understand a Form.

Exactly. In order to see "horseness" you cannot perceive with the eye of flesh (science), or with the eye of mind (reason). You need different eyes. This is the domain of the contemplative eye. (I avoided the use a religious expression here ). Though I would say 'horseness" has a deeper essence which is universal, that "Is'ness" to try to put a word to it.

 

Without postulating separated universals, it seems valid to me to think of essences as grasped by the intellect and potentially available to anyone to reach via reason. I don't know how transrationality gets us any closer.

Because it sees beyond forms. Reason works with forms. For the sake of avoiding words people chaff at, we could say in this case the eye of contemplation. Or the contemplative domain.

 

I think a problem with heavy emphasis on the oneness of all things is to give an account of ethics that preserves the integrity of the individual person. This is a problem I have with what I understand is a buddhistic view of the person - i.e. is basically annihilates "person" by deeming it merely a construct, and holding that in reality, there is no self, just a sort of stream going by.

I alluded to something above about "I-I". When the self is annihilated that does not mean you are a wall. No, not at all. It means that you have seen that the true nature of who you are is not all these mental objects you look at and identify as you. Obviously all those things that make up your personality, your likes and dislikes, you physical attributes, etc, all remain. But you are freed from seeing them as the sum or the seat of who you are. You are no longer embedded within it unable to see itself within it. You are much, much, much more than just the form you identify as your self. That self is still there, and you don't become immoral or any such thing at all. In fact in that higher realization of your true Nature, you recognize your Self. Meaning, you as You. I-I.

 

And now, from that position, from that self-identification, an entire freedom opens. I cannot describe it in words. All that is, is you. All that arises, you are that. You are love and compassion, wisdom and knowledge, you see yourself in all that is as yourself. How you see yourself and the world is radically altered. It is a concrete experience of self knowledge and awareness, accessed though opening ourselves beyond what simply appears to the eye of flesh and the eye of mind. I cannot put this in words.

 

In that case, I think a neighborhood watch guy shooting an unarmed teenager is simply an instance or ephemeral event in the stream - put another way, it's one way the absolute interacts with itself. Where is the wrongness or rightness in actions between persons if there really are no persons, so therefore, no possessors of rights and responsibilities?

Because you become life itself, and from that source you value all as yourself.

 

I apologize I got so deep in trying to explain these things, but the questions you asked I couldn't find right now how to address another way. I really appreciate the depth of questions you were asking. I'm happy to talk more with you as I enjoy your thoughts greatly.

 

I will circle back to replying to LL later, but for now will simply say I'm really enjoying our beers together.

[Guest end3]

In the grand scheme of things.....you take my Christianity or AM's Ground of Being or some proposed reductionist mechanism, they have ALL demonstrated failure on an immediate level in "this here very thread".

 

Two things to point out here......one, failure of humanity and two, that the rules, whatever they may be, and the rigorous practice thereof, are less of a covenant than is the unity, harmony, and oneness of repenting and sacrifice for that outcome.

 

So, i am unclear why this is not recongnizable to most. It's very, very, VERY similar to the OT Law vs. the NT Grace.

 

I rest my case.

 

Edit: And that, mi amigos, would be true. Shred it as you may, it won't change.

[florduh]

I rest my case.

Let's see how long that holds!

[florduh]

[Antlerman]

In the grand scheme of things.....you take my Christianity or AM's Ground of Being or some proposed reductionist mechanism, they have ALL demonstrated failure on an immediate level in "this here very thread".

 

Two things to point out here......one, failure of humanity and two, that the rules, whatever they may be, and the rigorous practice thereof, are less of a covenant than is the unity, harmony, and oneness of repenting and sacrifice for that outcome.

 

So, i am unclear why this is not recongnizable to most. It's very, very, VERY similar to the OT Law vs. the NT Grace.

 

I rest my case.

 

Edit: And that, mi amigos, would be true. Shred it as you may, it won't change.

You rest your case for what?

 

Not that I want to stray too terribly far from our current discussion over beers together, but as usual End, even though your words strung together in your nearly incomprehensible manner, with my unfocusing my eyes just right, I actually get what you are trying to say. It seems I've always had this almost supernatural gift to understand you that way.

 

All you are trying to say is that we cannot understand that nature of the absolute, that essence of beingness, to give it another word, with any sort of mental models or forms. You then cite the book of Hebrews to show how that the author of it understood the OT in this light, that they are mere shadows of what is beyond them, and that to him that full Realization is in Christ. Perhaps for him it was. But in reality, Christianity itself is but a model. Christ is an archetypal symbol in religious experience. And as a form, it is a face, and not the thing itself.

 

So what we are left with together then End is this: No Religion.

[Antlerman]

 

http://www.myspace.com/video/saturday-night-live/rude-buddha/108578324

[par4dcourse]

of repenting and sacrifice for that outcome.

 

 

There's no one to repent to and therefore nothing to repent for.