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Post by laughter on Oct 17, 2013 10:56:12 GMT -5
I hope you don't mind if I respond to this, too. When I first read this exchange, I thought if people believe ego is part of self, then logically, it would, but ego in and of itself, I believe, developed into a sort of religious belief, so ego itself is already an illusion / mirage.
How would you classify vanity, fear, anger -- ego, self, both, or other? If you make the distinction between vanity, on one hand, and limit ego instead to fear and anger, on the other, you can gain an insight into the fallacy of the expectation of permanent abatement of ego. The line of reasoning I'm suggesting brings into question the use of the idea of ego as any sort of metric for measuring or characterizing awakening to begin with. FWIW, that distinction between "awakening to" and "awakening from" strikes me, at this point, as a contrivance. I don't have any kids but if I imagine being a parent then for the life of me I find it hard to imagine somehow remaining free of the potential to project our own self-preservation instinct onto the image of the child.
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Post by entropy on Oct 17, 2013 14:31:52 GMT -5
Ego is an imagined thing that you are creating in order to dissect yourself into pieces and know yourself better. You are slicing yourself up into pieces, naming the pieces things like ego, small self, personality etc...and then trying to understand the parts as you have separated them. You are dividing the indivisible to know it better. But keep in mind, that dividing is not uniting ;-) If you want to know, keep dividing, if you want gnosis of God Union, stop knowing, stop dividing, and alertly BE, without knowing. This is kind of how I see it as well. The self is just a circumscribed boundary of consciousness. Consciousness has created these boundaries by paying attention to them. If it withdraws attention, the boundaries or subdivisions disappear. So the self is just a result of interest and habit/conditioning.
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Post by quinn on Oct 17, 2013 15:17:26 GMT -5
Ah so that's why folks talk about how 'awakening' is more like waking within the dream. One knows they are dreaming whereas before they were fully immersed in the dream. I don't know what you're talking about with the marital irritation issue, BTW. Ha. What I've noticed with those situations is that the ability to be aware of the dream in that case is inversely proportional to the intensity of emotion involved. These folks who say they've 'awakened' within the dream, do they remain fully aware of the dreaminess nonstop? I don't know who these awakened folks that you speak of are . All I know is that when snapping happens, it happens fully. Dreaming or awake doesn't play into it. And it might even be a response to being disrespected, which one would think would presuppose 'self' involvement. But once we're in relationship, the psychological self has to be running. It's how we experience. The only important 'knowledge' is realizing the insubstantial nature of that self. Or, as some here might put it, to lose the belief that it's anything more than an illusion, albeit a persistent one. (apologies to Albert for changing his quote)
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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2013 15:30:40 GMT -5
Ego is an imagined thing that you are creating in order to dissect yourself into pieces and know yourself better. You are slicing yourself up into pieces, naming the pieces things like ego, small self, personality etc...and then trying to understand the parts as you have separated them. You are dividing the indivisible to know it better. But keep in mind, that dividing is not uniting ;-) If you want to know, keep dividing, if you want gnosis of God Union, stop knowing, stop dividing, and alertly BE, without knowing. This is kind of how I see it as well. The self is just a circumscribed boundary of consciousness. Consciousness has created these boundaries by paying attention to them. If it withdraws attention, the boundaries or subdivisions disappear. So the self is just a result of interest and habit/conditioning. If you are self aware, and in gnosis of the dreamlike state of reality, if you are in gnosis of yourself, everything that you do, everything that is happening, is a spiritual activity
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Post by silence on Oct 17, 2013 16:01:26 GMT -5
I'm not wedded to that little brainfart in my OP, I don't care about it all. I'm just ruminating on these cases where someone has 'awakened' from the dream of being a separate being from the rest of the universe but still they report the movement of ambition and specialness, which they term ego. It seems like this necessarily suggests that self and ego are not the same. Or that the particular 'awakening' from the dream of self was not actually an awakening, but just a shift of some sort. The not particularly caring piece is a vibe I get from you pretty consistently. It seems like you're just sort of pushing words around maybe putting together a solid theoretical understanding of what teachers are saying and/or experiencing. That's not some sort of a problem but it is worlds apart from what people are trying to point out to you. Your interest seems to be a bit like a water bug pushing itself around on the surface of the lake wondering what the big deal about water is.
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Post by entropy on Oct 17, 2013 16:02:03 GMT -5
If you are self aware, and in gnosis of the dreamlike state of reality, if you are in gnosis of yourself, everything that you do, everything that is happening, is a spiritual activity I would describe that as "the discovery of perfection in every moment".
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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2013 16:14:21 GMT -5
Ah so that's why folks talk about how 'awakening' is more like waking within the dream. One knows they are dreaming whereas before they were fully immersed in the dream. I don't know what you're talking about with the marital irritation issue, BTW. Ha. What I've noticed with those situations is that the ability to be aware of the dream in that case is inversely proportional to the intensity of emotion involved. These folks who say they've 'awakened' within the dream, do they remain fully aware of the dreaminess nonstop? What I've noticed with those situations is that the ability to be aware of the dream in that case is inversely proportional to the intensity of emotion involved.About this world being like a dream, if that were true it seems one could change the dream. Like magic. I've had lucid dreams before. In one I could influence things. Wouldn't noticing strange phenomenon break down the belief in logic? God can and does influence the dream in every moment. Even just looking at something influences the dream, and you are the eyes of God, the hands of God, the Mind of God. Jesus said: “Whatsoever things ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them." Because this reality is an aggregate of billions of waves of God Consciousness, some natural laws, or a kind of framework of harmony has to be in place in order to maintain a balance between harmonious order and creative exploration in knowing thyself as God. For example...if each wave of God Consciousness instantly created whatever whim that appears, imagine the chaos...your sleeping dreams have an aspect of chaos to them when it is only you dreaming the dream, imagine if we were all in the same shared dream and each was instantly creating the unconscious whimsical chaos that occurs in your nightly individual dreams. In this shared reality, where billions of waves of God Consciousness are all "in it together", there is a mechanism in place that balances the chaos of creation with the harmony of a shared dream. The mechanism is a time delay, that allows for a selection process to happen in what you create in the shared dream. "When ye pray, believe (currently) that ye receive them, and ye shall (future tense) receive them." If you, as a wave of God Consciousness, want to exercise your Godly Power to influence the shared dream, then it has to be done in a way that maintains the harmonious balance between order and creativity. The way that absolute chaos is prevented, is that in order to consciously influence the dream, you have to follow some basic rules. The rules are: 1. You have to have a VERY clear picture of how you want to influence the shared dream. 2. You have to use your imagination to very clearly see the creative change as the current reality, and maintain that vision until it is reality. 3. You have hold this vision with the power of absolute faith and certainty for long enough that the universe recognizes that the influence you want to create in the dream is not a passing whim that would create chaos if every passing whim was manifested. 4. Understand that the more your desired influence in the dream is in harmony with the natural laws of this dream, the easier it is to manifest your influence in the shared dream....and conversely, the more that your desired influence deviates from the current flow and harmony of the shared dream, the more vividly, consistently, and concentratedly you will have to hold your desired outcome as a current reality, in order to manifest the shift in dream reality that you desire. Said another way on that last bit...the more that your desired influence on the shared dream deviates from what is currently manifesting, the greater the amount of maintained clarity and concentration of vision is required to cause the shift. In this case, "concentration" means holding a specific clarity of vision to the exclusion of entertaining other whimsical desires that arise. For example...Men or Women that arise from poverty to massive wealth, think almost entirely and exclusively on having more and more wealth to the exclusion of almost every other thought or desire. This is why there are so few women on the list of the 1000 most wealthy people on the planet, because women are less likely to foolishly stay almost exclusively focused on building MORE wealth after they have achieved a high level of security in maintaining their chosen lifestyle. As an aside...do not imagine that because these natural laws are in place that you are an autonomous separate individual....you are an aspect of God, and as such, your desires, i.e. your "wants" in how you want to influence or live in this shared dream, are the will of God in a greater harmony of increasing diversity in the ways that you; God, are "knowing thyself".
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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2013 16:27:32 GMT -5
To me, it's a lot simpler than all that. What we call ego is just a movement of thought that takes ownership of whatever is going on. So say I just snapped at my husband (not that I would ever do that, heh heh)...ego says I've got a problem or I'm justified or I feel guilty or whatever it takes to latch "me" into the equation and create a psychological self. Ego and self are both phantom thought-creations, self being the psychological creation and ego being the (thought-created)name we give that process. That's basically how you described it (ego) too, but then you gave it all sorts of powers. To say that ego 'continues' or is 'steered by' personality is to give it substance. It has no substance - it's just a movement of thought. If the myth of self can be seen through, what does it matter if the movement to create that 'self' keeps running? As long as we have bodies to tend to and people keep calling us by name, that movement is still going to be active. The point is that it isn't anything substantial. Ah so that's why folks talk about how 'awakening' is more like waking within the dream. One knows they are dreaming whereas before they were fully immersed in the dream. Yes...the "awakening" that most people talk about, is precisely that, becoming aware of the dreamlike nature of self and reality while still in the dream. There is a "further" though....one can actually totally remove themselves from the dream into absolute wakefulness via shifts in consciousness...shifting into an absolute Samadhi is being totally awake and removed from the "dream" altogether....while relative Samadhi is like being half awake and half in the dream...a foot in both the dream and wakefulness so to speak. To FULLY gnosis the nature of the dream, one needs to FULLY wake from it from time to time, just as you need to fully wake from your nightly sleeping dreams to fully gnosis the dream state for what it is.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2013 16:39:57 GMT -5
Ah so that's why folks talk about how 'awakening' is more like waking within the dream. One knows they are dreaming whereas before they were fully immersed in the dream. Yes...the "awakening" that most people talk about, is precisely that, becoming aware of the dreamlike nature of self and reality while still in the dream. There is a "further" though....one can actually totally remove themselves from the dream into absolute wakefulness via shifts in consciousness...shifting into an absolute Samadhi is being totally awake and removed from the "dream" altogether.... while relative Samadhi is like being half awake and half in the dream...a foot in both the dream and wakefulness so to speak. To FULLY gnosis the nature of the dream, one needs to FULLY wake from it from time to time, just as you need to fully wake from your nightly sleeping dreams to fully gnosis the dream state for what it is. So this is like, where you is just wearing the Stevie coat?
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Post by enigma on Oct 17, 2013 23:32:07 GMT -5
Ah so that's why folks talk about how 'awakening' is more like waking within the dream. One knows they are dreaming whereas before they were fully immersed in the dream. I don't know what you're talking about with the marital irritation issue, BTW. Ha. What I've noticed with those situations is that the ability to be aware of the dream in that case is inversely proportional to the intensity of emotion involved. These folks who say they've 'awakened' within the dream, do they remain fully aware of the dreaminess nonstop? What I've noticed with those situations is that the ability to be aware of the dream in that case is inversely proportional to the intensity of emotion involved.About this world being like a dream, if that were true it seems one could change the dream. Like magic. I've had lucid dreams before. In one I could influence things. Wouldn't noticing strange phenomenon break down the belief in logic? As one becomes more conscious of the dream, the connection between thought and events becomes more clear. However, the apparent ability of the lucid dreamer to manipulate dreams is still an illusion, as the one manipulating is also part of the dream. It's a dream about manipulating dreams, which is why it doesn't happen all the time, even for the lucid dreamer. IOW, even from the 'awakened perspective' the dream character is still a dream character. He never becomes separate from the dream.
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Post by enigma on Oct 17, 2013 23:35:29 GMT -5
Ego is an imagined thing that you are creating in order to dissect yourself into pieces and know yourself better. You are slicing yourself up into pieces, naming the pieces things like ego, small self, personality etc...and then trying to understand the parts as you have separated them. You are dividing the indivisible to know it better. But keep in mind, that dividing is not uniting ;-) If you want to know, keep dividing, if you want gnosis of God Union, stop knowing, stop dividing, and alertly BE, without knowing. This is kind of how I see it as well. The self is just a circumscribed boundary of consciousness. Consciousness has created these boundaries by paying attention to them. If it withdraws attention, the boundaries or subdivisions disappear. So the self is just a result of interest and habit/conditioning. Yup.
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Post by enigma on Oct 17, 2013 23:58:34 GMT -5
What I've noticed with those situations is that the ability to be aware of the dream in that case is inversely proportional to the intensity of emotion involved.About this world being like a dream, if that were true it seems one could change the dream. Like magic. I've had lucid dreams before. In one I could influence things. Wouldn't noticing strange phenomenon break down the belief in logic? God can and does influence the dream in every moment. Even just looking at something influences the dream, and you are the eyes of God, the hands of God, the Mind of God. Jesus said: “Whatsoever things ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them." Because this reality is an aggregate of billions of waves of God Consciousness, some natural laws, or a kind of framework of harmony has to be in place in order to maintain a balance between harmonious order and creative exploration in knowing thyself as God. For example...if each wave of God Consciousness instantly created whatever whim that appears, imagine the chaos...your sleeping dreams have an aspect of chaos to them when it is only you dreaming the dream, imagine if we were all in the same shared dream and each was instantly creating the unconscious whimsical chaos that occurs in your nightly individual dreams. In this shared reality, where billions of waves of God Consciousness are all "in it together", there is a mechanism in place that balances the chaos of creation with the harmony of a shared dream. The mechanism is a time delay, that allows for a selection process to happen in what you create in the shared dream. "When ye pray, believe (currently) that ye receive them, and ye shall (future tense) receive them." If you, as a wave of God Consciousness, want to exercise your Godly Power to influence the shared dream, then it has to be done in a way that maintains the harmonious balance between order and creativity. The way that absolute chaos is prevented, is that in order to consciously influence the dream, you have to follow some basic rules. The rules are: 1. You have to have a VERY clear picture of how you want to influence the shared dream. 2. You have to use your imagination to very clearly see the creative change as the current reality, and maintain that vision until it is reality. 3. You have hold this vision with the power of absolute faith and certainty for long enough that the universe recognizes that the influence you want to create in the dream is not a passing whim that would create chaos if every passing whim was manifested. 4. Understand that the more your desired influence in the dream is in harmony with the natural laws of this dream, the easier it is to manifest your influence in the shared dream....and conversely, the more that your desired influence deviates from the current flow and harmony of the shared dream, the more vividly, consistently, and concentratedly you will have to hold your desired outcome as a current reality, in order to manifest the shift in dream reality that you desire. Said another way on that last bit...the more that your desired influence on the shared dream deviates from what is currently manifesting, the greater the amount of maintained clarity and concentration of vision is required to cause the shift. In this case, "concentration" means holding a specific clarity of vision to the exclusion of entertaining other whimsical desires that arise. For example...Men or Women that arise from poverty to massive wealth, think almost entirely and exclusively on having more and more wealth to the exclusion of almost every other thought or desire. This is why there are so few women on the list of the 1000 most wealthy people on the planet, because women are less likely to foolishly stay almost exclusively focused on building MORE wealth after they have achieved a high level of security in maintaining their chosen lifestyle. As an aside... do not imagine that because these natural laws are in place that you are an autonomous separate individual....you are an aspect of God, and as such, your desires, i.e. your "wants" in how you want to influence or live in this shared dream, are the will of God in a greater harmony of increasing diversity in the ways that you; God, are "knowing thyself". Well, yeah, which is why there need not be a harmony balancing mechanism. Creation is already balanced by virtue of this fact of 'no autonomous individual'. Whatever is focused on is already part of creation, and harmony is inherent in that singular movement. The decision to 'manifest' something is already part of the manifestation. Hencely, the choices are already in harmony and cannot be otherwise.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 18, 2013 0:14:45 GMT -5
God can and does influence the dream in every moment. Even just looking at something influences the dream, and you are the eyes of God, the hands of God, the Mind of God. Jesus said: “Whatsoever things ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them." Because this reality is an aggregate of billions of waves of God Consciousness, some natural laws, or a kind of framework of harmony has to be in place in order to maintain a balance between harmonious order and creative exploration in knowing thyself as God. For example...if each wave of God Consciousness instantly created whatever whim that appears, imagine the chaos...your sleeping dreams have an aspect of chaos to them when it is only you dreaming the dream, imagine if we were all in the same shared dream and each was instantly creating the unconscious whimsical chaos that occurs in your nightly individual dreams. In this shared reality, where billions of waves of God Consciousness are all "in it together", there is a mechanism in place that balances the chaos of creation with the harmony of a shared dream. The mechanism is a time delay, that allows for a selection process to happen in what you create in the shared dream. "When ye pray, believe (currently) that ye receive them, and ye shall (future tense) receive them." If you, as a wave of God Consciousness, want to exercise your Godly Power to influence the shared dream, then it has to be done in a way that maintains the harmonious balance between order and creativity. The way that absolute chaos is prevented, is that in order to consciously influence the dream, you have to follow some basic rules. The rules are: 1. You have to have a VERY clear picture of how you want to influence the shared dream. 2. You have to use your imagination to very clearly see the creative change as the current reality, and maintain that vision until it is reality. 3. You have hold this vision with the power of absolute faith and certainty for long enough that the universe recognizes that the influence you want to create in the dream is not a passing whim that would create chaos if every passing whim was manifested. 4. Understand that the more your desired influence in the dream is in harmony with the natural laws of this dream, the easier it is to manifest your influence in the shared dream....and conversely, the more that your desired influence deviates from the current flow and harmony of the shared dream, the more vividly, consistently, and concentratedly you will have to hold your desired outcome as a current reality, in order to manifest the shift in dream reality that you desire. Said another way on that last bit...the more that your desired influence on the shared dream deviates from what is currently manifesting, the greater the amount of maintained clarity and concentration of vision is required to cause the shift. In this case, "concentration" means holding a specific clarity of vision to the exclusion of entertaining other whimsical desires that arise. For example...Men or Women that arise from poverty to massive wealth, think almost entirely and exclusively on having more and more wealth to the exclusion of almost every other thought or desire. This is why there are so few women on the list of the 1000 most wealthy people on the planet, because women are less likely to foolishly stay almost exclusively focused on building MORE wealth after they have achieved a high level of security in maintaining their chosen lifestyle. As an aside... do not imagine that because these natural laws are in place that you are an autonomous separate individual....you are an aspect of God, and as such, your desires, i.e. your "wants" in how you want to influence or live in this shared dream, are the will of God in a greater harmony of increasing diversity in the ways that you; God, are "knowing thyself". Well, yeah, which is why there need not be a harmony balancing mechanism. Creation is already balanced by virtue of this fact of 'no autonomous individual'. Whatever is focused on is already part of creation, and harmony is inherent in that singular movement. The decision to 'manifest' something is already part of the manifestation. Hencely, the choices are already in harmony and cannot be otherwise. Nothing that you said there means that there is no "mechanism" by which it harmony is happens.Your post is bit like responding to a post describing the mechanisms (biology and chemistry) by which a seed becomes a a flower by saying that the biological and chemical processes by which the the seed becomes a flower is not needed because there is already a flower. Just because the flower exists, does not mean there is no "mechanism" to it blossoming :-) If you show a child a seed and a flower, and tell him that the seed becomes the flower, and he asks to see the seed become the flower RIGHT NOW, instantaneously, what will you tell his inquisitive mind? Knowing the natural laws regarding how a seed becomes a flower, can be very useful for someone interested in farming ;-)
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Post by lolly on Oct 18, 2013 0:54:45 GMT -5
Due to my particular spiritual influences, the ego isn't like a thing in the sense of a noun... it's actually a misnomer in that regard. It's strange that a sense of self pertains to self image which isn't stagnant, but a changing perception of 'who I am', yet there's also a sense in eternal continuity which endures the changing self image. What my influences led me to believe is ego is a collation of reactivity that stems from associating events with 'my-self', and as such, it's a behavior (as in a verb) and not an object (as in a noun).
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Post by Deleted on Oct 18, 2013 2:20:00 GMT -5
What I've noticed with those situations is that the ability to be aware of the dream in that case is inversely proportional to the intensity of emotion involved.About this world being like a dream, if that were true it seems one could change the dream. Like magic. I've had lucid dreams before. In one I could influence things. Wouldn't noticing strange phenomenon break down the belief in logic? As one becomes more conscious of the dream, the connection between thought and events becomes more clear. However, the apparent ability of the lucid dreamer to manipulate dreams is still an illusion, as the one manipulating is also part of the dream. It's a dream about manipulating dreams, which is why it doesn't happen all the time, even for the lucid dreamer. IOW, even from the 'awakened perspective' the dream character is still a dream character. He never becomes separate from the dream. Yeah, lucid dreaming is, a strange phenomenon. It is concluded that because there was awareness of the character in the dreamstate, then there was influence upon the whole dream. And yet the landscapes, soundscapes and direction of conversations, are all flourishing from indifferent imagination.
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