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Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2013 6:15:34 GMT -5
Hey-yo STers. 'Tis me, M-G. Was deeply fascinated by this new section, felt drawn to partake. Three types of discussion Moderated, unmoderated, and... From the 1983 movie, War Games. [after Joshua plays out all possible outcomes for Global Thermonuclear War (GTW)] Joshua: Greetings, Professor Falken. Professor Falken: Hello, Joshua. Joshua: A strange game (GTW). The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? Yeah...sometimes the only winning move is not to play. <-- does this quote look familiar to you? Surely, if you are into this sort of thing, if you deem it valuable and worthy of your time, out of the 7 billion people on earth you must be able to find one person with which to have a mutually enriching conversation with. This post inspired by my reasons for leaving and justlikeyou's amazing piece of art from this thread |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2013 12:44:10 GMT -5
Okay, so it's been raining on and off for nearly a week now.
Yesterday and all last night has been the heaviest and most consistent.
I suspect the type of energy in the atmosphere that comes with rain
may be a partial influence for what happened this morning.
I stayed up much later than i usually do, went to beddie byes at 1:30 am,
expecting to have a deep multiple dreamy sleep and wake up around 5-7am.
Well i had the multiple dreams, but i awoke at 3 am, again...but unexpectantly refreshed.
The other suspect is an overdose of chocolate. Gotta love the experiments.
Plus, i had a coffee at lunchtime.
The beach was extra beautiful with it's choppy grey waves
under a grey heavily misted and overcast sky with intermittent heavy showers.
The seagulls were subdued as they hung around me ute waiting for a feed.
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Post by laughter on Jul 4, 2013 16:46:31 GMT -5
Welcome back James.  |
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Post by silence on Jul 4, 2013 17:06:52 GMT -5
Mr.G?? Run!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2013 17:09:50 GMT -5
No not that one  |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2013 14:02:21 GMT -5
Welcome back James. Thanks laughter, though i shall not be staying long. Just began looking for a new online home, realized i left something here so i've popped in to collect it and to say hi and while i was doing so, i noticed the two things that i mentioned in the OP. Interestingly, 77 views and only one person offers a warm greeting. I stand by my decision as to why i previously left. Though totally understandable because you all know i do not believe the nonduality theory is sound. As i said previously, to me the only use it has is to strain spaghetti or any other pasta variants. That makes me an enemy of the state (of being) for some. So anyways, keeping on topic, discussions. i was at the spiritual shop in lonnie(launceston) on friday, continuing to get to know the wonderful people behind the counter. Typical tasmanians, compared to mainlanders, that even though i have found most people involved in spiritual shops to be open and friendly, tasmanians seem to have a natural higher level of these attributes. Even though tasmanian businesses are operating so they can make money\earn a living, their main focus in on the people they meet in their shops. Anyways, so were were talking about various spiritual\metaphsycial\inner realm things, when the subject of nonduality came up. I expressed my view that i am all for oneness, wholeness, unity, the interconnectivity of all things in reality, but what i do not agree with are the unverified theories of illusion that seem to me to be attached to the aforementioned concepts, and the seemingly obsessive dislike of mind and thinking. It was then that another customer politely joined into our conversation with these comments. He considers that a lot of these nonduality beliefs/concepts/theories remind him of these puzzles... - Draw a rectangle with three straight lines. - Make a piece of rope longer without doing anything to it. We agreed with him. |
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Post by laughter on Jul 5, 2013 14:19:23 GMT -5
 The rectangle one is easy: just use the edge of the paper for one of the sides ... my guess on the rope one is that it involves some sort of trick on perspective. Thinking or thought is not an enemy and what nonduality points toward is the end of the line for enmity ... it's just that thinking about it isn't what gets you there ... and of course, there's nowhere to get and noone to go there.  We are all richer for having made your acquaintance James, I say that with sincerity. |
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Post by laughter on Jul 5, 2013 14:22:42 GMT -5
No not that one Running from that one would do no good anyway ... here, tell the Silencer that he can borrow one of mine!  |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2013 17:19:18 GMT -5
No not that one Running from that one would do no good anyway ... here, tell the Silencer that he can borrow one of mine! That's generous of you, I see that these designs are available as well?  |
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Post by ???????? ???????????? on Jul 5, 2013 17:42:21 GMT -5
Me too. I suspect that the issue is not that nonduality is a riddle, but rather that even if the nondualists' experience is genuine, their intellect can't catch up with their experience and that's why they are talking nonsense most of the time. It is a bit of a conundrum. In order to excel at this nonduality game one apparently has to shut down mind, and this means that the intellect has no opportunity to grow to be refined enough to form a precise enough model, and as a result we get spiritual teachers who can't articulate themselves well enough to be understood by others. |
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Post by steven on Jul 5, 2013 19:33:01 GMT -5
Me too. I suspect that the issue is not that nonduality is a riddle, but rather that even if the nondualists' experience is genuine, their intellect can't catch up with their experience and that's why they are talking nonsense most of the time. It is a bit of a conundrum. In order to excel at this nonduality game one apparently has to shut down mind, and this means that the intellect has no opportunity to grow to be refined enough to form a precise enough model, and as a result we get spiritual teachers who can't articulate themselves well enough to be understood by others. Haha, most of the "great" spiritual teachers never try to articulate a "model"....they simply offer a means for you to "see" for yourself. The teachers that offer a precise model are suspect, or inexperienced, or both. Most folks see, or experience the same things as you go deeper and deeper into this path, until you finally "pop", but even though there is a commonality of experience to a degree, the perception of that experience can only be communicated through this mind body experience to another mind body experience, and both sets of experience are going to have their own unique "relativities", which adds more complication to communication. Think of a guy who only speaks Chinese trying to teach you what the color Orange is, when you have never seen the color Orange....in those cases, it's MUCH easier to just show you where to find an example of the color Orange for you to get a glimpse of....from there you can translate it into English and try to find a common frame of reference to work with. But having said all of that, in some ways, this path is really about doing away with "frames of reference". I use to use the analogy of a huge brick wall....from a far distance, you can only see a brownish red wall....as you get closer, you will be able to see a wall and the desperation of bricks in the wall....as you get closer still, you can now see a section of bricks up close, but can no longer see the whole wall....get closer still, and your vision will only take in one Brick clearly, with a only a fuzzy outline of where on brick ends and the others begin...look even closer and closer and you will only see the texture of the brick, and closer still, only the molecules of the brick......and if you spend a lifetime only looking at the one brick, you can get to the point where you are so absorbed in that one brick that the wall does not even exist for you anymore. This is the function of Mind, it is exploring and exploring in more and more up close detail all the time, so much so that its knowledge, understanding, and clarity of that one Brick is so acute that its utterly ABSORBED in itself, to the point where the Wall can't be seen. The nature of this path is to remove oneself from this absorption, so that the Wall in its entirety is no longer excluded from view via the absorption in SELF. What you, and the other philosophers are doing, is trying to see the whole wall through a Microscope, and you are so use to looking through a Microscope, that you cling to it with a Kung fu death grip, and then complain that "teachers" can't show you the whole wall through you microscope. So a good "spiritual teacher" will tell you, "set down the microscope, and I will help you teach yourself how to see without one, but be aware, that your vision is so use to seeing through a microscope, that there will likely be a good amount of retraining of the eyes required" ;-) |
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Post by silence on Jul 5, 2013 20:42:51 GMT -5
Me too. I suspect that the issue is not that nonduality is a riddle, but rather that even if the nondualists' experience is genuine, their intellect can't catch up with their experience and that's why they are talking nonsense most of the time. Yes, there is some truth to that. |
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Post by earnest on Jul 6, 2013 2:49:20 GMT -5
Welcome back James. Thanks laughter, though i shall not be staying long. Just began looking for a new online home, realized i left something here so i've popped in to collect it and to say hi and while i was doing so, i noticed the two things that i mentioned in the OP. Interestingly, 77 views and only one person offers a warm greeting. I stand by my decision as to why i previously left. Though totally understandable because you all know i do not believe the nonduality theory is sound. As i said previously, to me the only use it has is to strain spaghetti or any other pasta variants. That makes me an enemy of the state (of being) for some. So anyways, keeping on topic, discussions. i was at the spiritual shop in lonnie(launceston) on friday, continuing to get to know the wonderful people behind the counter. Typical tasmanians, compared to mainlanders, that even though i have found most people involved in spiritual shops to be open and friendly, tasmanians seem to have a natural higher level of these attributes. Even though tasmanian businesses are operating so they can make money\earn a living, their main focus in on the people they meet in their shops. Anyways, so were were talking about various spiritual\metaphsycial\inner realm things, when the subject of nonduality came up. I expressed my view that i am all for oneness, wholeness, unity, the interconnectivity of all things in reality, but what i do not agree with are the unverified theories of illusion that seem to me to be attached to the aforementioned concepts, and the seemingly obsessive dislike of mind and thinking. It was then that another customer politely joined into our conversation with these comments. He considers that a lot of these nonduality beliefs/concepts/theories remind him of these puzzles... - Draw a rectangle with three straight lines. - Make a piece of rope longer without doing anything to it. We agreed with him. Ah James,.. I counted/experienced 11 little shenpas arising when I read your post. No one triggers me quite like you do... and I can really see the value in that these days. I did think of you from time to time after you originally left, and I don't know if I'll miss you when you leave again, but I do genuinely wish you all the best in wherever you end up. |
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Post by ???????? ???????????? on Jul 6, 2013 4:42:42 GMT -5
Haha, most of the "great" spiritual teachers never try to articulate a "model"....they simply offer a means for you to "see" for yourself. Which means that they must have some kind of a model about how and why they became enlightened. And it is from this model that they invent strategies to help others. But if their model is flawed then so will be their pointers. No, that's what bad teachers say. What microscope? And why such an vague qualifier? |
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Post by earnest on Jul 6, 2013 5:03:51 GMT -5
Haha, most of the "great" spiritual teachers never try to articulate a "model"....they simply offer a means for you to "see" for yourself. Which means that they must have some kind of a model about how and why they became enlightened. And it is from this model that they invent strategies to help others. But if their model is flawed then so will be their pointers. How can you know if a teacher's model/approach/teaching/whatever is flawed? Just cos it doesn't meet your expectations?? I haven't read all your posts but you seem to think ATA was either flawed or wrong, which (in the spirit of the unmoderated discussion, and not as a personal attack) seems pretty naive.. What have you found that does work? |
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