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Goodbye Jesus

Ah, Looks Like It Was All In Our Heads After All :)


blackpudd1n

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They won't know it's because I meditate, because my possessions speak louder than my inner life.

Are you concerned it has become this for you?

 

I would want my exterior life to reflect my interior life, and get rid of my house, car, clothes, kids, wife, money. (I'll keep the health, thank you). Then what?

There's no reason to get rid of these things, if they are not substitutes for that inner peace. They are not the focus of your life,

 

You're right. But I would have more peace and joy if I had less stuff. The stuff is certainly not a substitute for my inner peace. Stuff is nice, but it can become cumbersome. All I need is a roof, a fridge, a bed, a cat, and a pc with Internet access.

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Why? If that's how you genuinely feel then share that. Why should that make her feel disconnected? People like feeling other people's happiness. I guess I don't get why you say this.

 

Because I have two bodies: my physical body and my ethereal body. When my mother-in-law asks me about my health, she's referring to my physical body. I know that. If I answer: "I'm perfectly healthy, my life is filled with light, love and harmony, I'm totally happy because I will never die." I'm referring to my etheral body, therefore I'm not answering her question, I'm actually lying to her because my physical body WILL die.

 

On the other hand, let's say I have a sore throat and I answer: "I have a soar throat." I'm ignoring my ethereal body, I'm being materialistic, I'm not being a light in the darkness. Do you understand?

Not really. I am aware what you mean to a degree what you mean by an ethereal body, but it's not that you are two separate beings. If you wish to talk about the different types of bodies there are actually 3, the gross, subtle, and causal bodies. Please read about that here: http://wilber.shambh...erptG/part3.cfm

 

I view myself as Spirit in the body. We all are that. I can't remember who it was that put it this way "I-I". My Nature is eternal but my body is temporal. It is entirely appropriate to speak of myself as 'me' when speaking with another person and not be denying my Self. I am That in this body.

 

Let me put it another way, what you are touching on is where your seat of self-identity is situated. When you were a young child with an early emerging sense of a separate self it was with your physical body. "This is me", as you bite your hand, "This is not me", as you bite your blanket. As you grew older and the level of your conscious mind evolved, you moved the center of that self from the body to the emerging ego structures, a mental sense of 'me/not me'. That's what most people identify themselves with and why we are separate from one another in the world, why we have such neurotic anxieties, etc. Then as you, and me, had the roof of that reality blow off and we saw ourselves infinitely beyond those things, we realize we are also Infinity itself beyond the body, beyond the ego self.

 

Now here's the thing. Even as an egoic based self as an adult, you never referred to your body as a separate you. You inegrated the body into the mental you. It is still you, but you don't exclusively identify with it. You transcend and include it into a higher reality. Same thing with spiritual Realization. You are still you in body, and in mind, but you transcend and include those into your higher Self. You didn't shed your flesh when you became an mentally based -self. You don't shed any of the rest as you move beyond that either.

 

Think of it in terms of the path of ascension and the path of descension. You reach to the Light, and in the apprehension of that Light, it fills the mind and the body with itself. You are fulfilled in a circle, not simply choosing to leave the world, and to enter into the world exclusively. Both. We are both.

 

 

This is the problem. Once you realize you have an ethereal body, you want everyone to know this "good news." They will not believe you, unless they already know this good news. You cannot transmit this information, they have to see it for themselves and there is no way for me to make them see it.

You are absolutely correct they cannot know it in themselves from someone telling them about it. I couldn't. But they actually do sense it. I always sense it in the world, even before entering into myself in self identity. It's seen in looking at the night sky and feeling life move through you. Everyone experiences that, and rightly so, for "The world is illusion. Brahman alone is real. Brahman is the world".

 

 

You suggest meditation, hoping the person will have the same experience you had. I don't believe the average Joe on the street can experience his ethereal body by meditating, because this is not how I experienced it.

Well, let me share with you this. How you experienced is very much the same from what I know in how I experienced it. For 30 years that experience stuck with me and has been the deep central influence in my own development ever since. It is what has drawn me to itself insistently. I elevated that experience as the ultimate, that when you have that, you've had it all. But here's the amazing truth. When I started practicing meditation not that long ago now, I found myself face to face with that again, every time! It is not just a split in the sky where Infinity shown through for a time, but bathing and immersing myself in that Ocean. It is communion in the Light. It is the same thing, only learning to grown with her, to become our true Self. To become That.

 

Now, as far as your 'average Joe' goes, certainly not every person is on such a path as this. But I can tell you I know many people personally who experience this in meditation, and it changes them profoundly. Your average person is content in life to just get along and have little interest in deep-diving into the Infinite Ocean beyond the shore. That's fine. But we are all part of that whole system of evolution in the universe. You can't have everyone be that, but you also can't have no one be that either. I could get complex explaining that further but I'll let it rest for now. I'll just leave with a saying from the Buddha I feel to share here.

 

Wanting nothing, With all your heart stop the stream.

When the world dissolves, everything becomes clear.

Go beyond this way or that way, to the farther shore,

where the world dissolves and everything becomes clear.

Beyond this shore and the farther shore, beyond the beyond,

where there is no beginning, no end.

Without fear, go.

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Thank you Antlerman, you speak the truth, what can I say, you leave me speechless. I need to go back to the Source, I'm pretty rusted as you can see. My poor little soul got overwhelmed by all the bullshit that is in the physical world. It's encouraging to hear that my good old Truth is still around, alive and kicking. For a while there I thought I had lost it forever. I just need to go back to it. Well not really, since it's already there. I just need to re-open to it. It's happening.

 

Gloray!

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Is "spiritual" in the mind of the beholder?

Of course. There are many ways it is seen and interpreted. But in your examples, it's not a case of understanding the spiritual, as it is try to either pursue or avoid what it exposes in ourselves.

My point in the use of the word spritual is to understand it distinctly different than just a cognitive, emotional, 'warm fuzzy'. It's categorically different than the 'normal' in a shared consensus reality. It's not that it isn't normal, as I fully believe it is the most real 'normal' there is. It's very natural, just not the average reality.

It's highly functional, when integrated though healthy growth.

 

It's highly functional when integrated... yeah.

 

I don't think I was ever able to integrate it. How do you integrate truth into dishonest relationships? How do you integrate integrity when you work for an employer who is screwing his clients? How do you integrate freedom when you live in a society that controls everything you do? How do you integrate trust when you deal with institutions that steal your money?

 

 

Good questions Denyoz.

 

"Rare are those who understand virtue," sighted Confucius. Rightly understood and practiced, ethical living--being kind, compassionate and truthful to yourself as well as to others is an essential means for awakening.

 

Buddha pointed out, "Whatever you do, you do to yourself."

 

Ethical living is absolutely crucial for advanced integral spirituality. To use Aman's words:

 

My point in the use of the word spiritual is to understand it distinctly different than just a cognitive, emotional, 'warm fuzzy'. It's categorically different than the 'normal' in a shared consensus reality. It's not that it isn't normal, as I fully believe it is the most real 'normal' there is. It's very natural, just not the average reality.

 

Without virtue it there is no advanced spiritual progress--no integration..

 

A question is what comes first or do they come in tandem--virtuous awakening?

 

As Jack Kornfield put it, "it's hard to sit down and meditate after a day of lying, cheating and hurting people."

 

I often wonder about my deep fear, and guilt, paranoia, and defensiveness and why I cannot achieve calm and clarity.

 

Although I've never had a NDE or experienced The Light or the Heat of a Burning Bush, once I felt the pain of an unkindly act--felt the burning flame of anger including my own--the disgust about what I have done to others-- the lack of integrity I have felt when caught violating not only my on values but the values of those whom I honor--the small things, not telling my wife something I felt important because she did not seem to want to hear it--or bending my values a bit to get ahead or to fit in or to be appreciated or feel important.

 

As I started paying attention to my own suffering--once I was awakened by my own pain to the value of virtue, integration was already in progress, the "very natural" had already been set into motion.

 

And just as the acts of forgiveness and loving-kindness are incompatible with feelings such as overwhelming anger and jealousy so too the deep fear, guilt, paranoia, defensiveness begin to lose their compulsive power.

 

"Rare are those who understand virtue," sighted Confucius.

 

I would venture to guess that my NDE or Light or Burning Bush would be the hellfire of my existential suffering and pain and the inherent value of virtue in the integrative process of becoming.

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Well here's a thought. We can be alive yet dead or alive and alive. I think Spiritual is much more the latter.

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Well here's a thought. We can be alive yet dead or alive and alive. I think Spiritual is much more the latter.

Or...we can be dead and alive. We can be alive but quite ill and we can die in perfect health. We can live but dream we are dead. We can make up anything we want while alive. Quickly as you can, snatch the pebble from my hand. This is deep.

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Guest end3
Well here's a thought. We can be alive yet dead or alive and alive. I think Spiritual is much more the latter.

Or...we can be dead and alive. We can be alive but quite ill and we can die in perfect health. We can live but dream we are dead. We can make up anything we want while alive. Quickly as you can, snatch the pebble from my hand. This is deep.

 

I know man, I know, where do I get this profoundly deep shit and not even high. Btw, you adulterated my beauty.....this would make you alive but dead. get it.

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I did have some 'spiritual' experiences on LSD and mescaline. I don't label them as profound insights because I know they were my brain playing tricks on itself.

I was planning to respond to this but didn't earlier. What's interesting is this. Both you and I know they are the mind presenting this stuff to us. You dismiss it, and I don't. So it's not because you know it's the brain. So do I.

 

Now the way you worded this is interesting. You you say "I didn't label them as profound insights". I don't label the experiences as profound insights either. However, through the experience, what it reveals about me deep inside is a profound insight. It's what I see in myself, it's what I realize through these means, that is profound insight. So much so, as intelligent and as highly analytical and critical thinking and reasoning as I am, none of that can come close to the degree of self-knowledge that comes through means such as these. That you did not gain insight through these things has little to do with "knowing it was the brain".

 

A shaman doing the same thing with LSD or mescaline would see the practice as a path to true spirituality. Chanting, meditating and whirling (as in Dervish) appear to me to be identical examples of cause and effect, that is, the brain is manipulated to produce anomalous experience.

Every single thing you do in your life entails a manipulation of the brain.

 

What you literally, factually, scientifically are doing in meditation practices such as this is physically rewiring your brain. You are creating and strengthening new pathways. Consider it mind development. And through such development, you will in fact have how you take in an process, understand and relate to the world radically altered. Is it postive? Pretty much every healthy mind (please note that qualification) that undergoes this sort of development will resoundingly say yes!

 

I have a hard time as seeing that as meaningful beyond the feelings it causes the experiencer to have.

And this has nothing to do with the experience itself. All things being equal, it has to do with many factors way outside "knowing it's the brain". What those may be can be an interesting discussion of its own.

 

Thanks, AM, for taking time to explain. I guess I'm just a lost cause tongue.png

Well, I'm just hoping to clarify misconceptions. Whether this is something you ever feel internally to do for yourself is your own path. I respect it isn't for everyone.

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