Hi, from Louisville! (Southern Indiana, Actually)

[sophia]

I am so happy that Shawn created this discussion forum for us to use from the Spiritual Friends Locator board. I have met several wonderful people over the past three years from the board and it is great to now have an opportunity to carry on discussions.

I'm from the Louisville, KY area and would love to meet people from my area, but I also enjoy making friends online. In some cases the friends I've made online have become closer to me than the people I've met face-to-face.

I am interested in esoteric spirituality. But I am very open to learning about others' spiritual preferences.

Thanks for letting me give a short introduction. I look forward to meeting others.

[Peter]

Hi Sophia, how nice to have the opportunity to chat!

How's your search for a new Teacher going?

Best Wishes,
Peter

[sophia]

Hi Peter,

Nice to hear from you again.

My search for a Teacher has been very awkward. I ran into a disappointing experience but luckily it was very short-lived and I am as hopeful and eager as I was before the bad experience.

Finding a Teacher is very difficult for me because the Teacher I am looking for would be very well hidden. The path I am most interested in is esoteric. The bad experience I had involved a Teacher that "taught" the Perennial Philosophy I've been wanting to learn more about, but I'm looking for someone else who can teach the same thing. I doubt there is anyone in my area as it is not a common path, so I am hopeful there is someone who would accept me as a student online.

I've briefly looked into other paths, but haven't felt anything with them, not like I've felt with the path I've chosen.

Thanks for asking.

[razorsedgezen]

Hi Sophia. This is Chris Papadopoulos (from the Me, Myself and I blog). Nice to see you on these boards. How's life treating you? How are the blogs going?

[sophia]

Hi Chris!

Nice to see another familiar face.

Life has been up and down, and me, I'm just learning to accept that. When it's up, it's UP! When it's down, I just try to remember that it will be UP again. Certainly I enjoy the ups while thanking the downs for teaching me not to take the ups for granted.

My blogs are, meanwhile, taking me on a fascinating journey of self-discovery while allowing me to correspond with beautiful people.

I ventured your way the other day and enjoyed the Dr. Quantum/Flatland video you have posted; how profound!

Have a great time.

[Anonymous]

I have found that that spirituality is simply a state of mind- the state of mind in which I am connected to God and everything (which God is). Anytime I have given it a name or categorized it, I was left with nothing spiritual at all. In fact in doing that, I had created one more identity that my Ego gained strength from.

Where the Ego is present, God is not. When I can detach from it, God is there.

[sophia]

But isn't God here, there, everywhere, whether or not we are being our ego? I imagine that God is there; it's just that without our ego we can experience "it". (Ego seems to have a way of clouding awareness.)

I don't know the answers. I'm just hypothesizing.

Edited to add: I do not think it would be possible to be ego-less 24/7, but that we might be able to detach from it when we do not need it.

I'm sure the ascetics that went to live in caves could experience "it" more often than most engaged in daily living.

What do you think?

[Anonymous]

There in never a time when I need my Ego. Difficult to part from no doubt, but persist I must.

Even when I cannot do it, I can still understand that it is right. The opposite is to believe that it is impossible and give way to justification of not striving for it. Then I am living just as I always had, with a new lie I falsely call "spirituality."

[sophia]

When you are in the aisle at the grocery store trying to find a ripe peach, do you not use your ego? Do you not think, "This peach is much too hard to be ripe," or, "This peach is nice and soft, but not too soft; it is just right"? You have personal tastes, and you know what kind of peach you like, which might differ from someone else's idea of a good peach. This is part of your identity. Is not your identity your ego?

Do you think that possibly, striving so hard to detach from your ego - to "persist" - could only make it stronger? Maybe when you find yourself wrapped up in ego, you think to yourself, "I am wrapped up in ego, and I shouldn't be." Is not this using ego?

What about, "This method is really spirituality, but that method is not"? Do you think that might be ego, too? Or maybe just labeling something as "spiritual" or "not spiritual" might be using the ego?

Just some thoughts.

I hope you're having a lovely night. I am. The crickets outside the open window chirp in a relaxing rhythm. I remember listening to that when I was going to sleep at night before a day of school.

[Anonymous]

Each of us knows deep inside what is the Ego and what is True Essence. To ask another for the answer is to ask their Ego for the answer. To ask is also to look for way out of facing the reality of the answer that is known inside. I do this all too often.

as for eating unripened peaches, I hope it is never the answer to any of my questions

[lightmystic]

Hi Sophia. I recognize you from the previous boards. Nice to see you here. You're openness is delightful and commendable. I greatly look forward to chatting with you at some point.

I appreciate you're point, which I think is incredibly beautiful: God/Wholeness is available even in the idea of separation itself! It's easy to get trapped in the absolute, which is what people think they want initially, but to really integrate wholeness is to integrate both absolute and appearance of relative. When you say ego, you seem to be referring to individuality. IF there's a world, there's certainly an individuality that continues in some capacity, but the relationship is totally different. It's just that the individuality becomes simply another appearance in the ocean of wholeness. This is not to say, however, that Enlightenment cannot be had without the rejection of the individual. The embracing of the individual fully allows one to see that one is not merely limited to that. I cannot call it a state of mind, it's more like when there is no longer a looking for a "thing," no longer looking for a state of mind. Complete openness, complete "I don't know-ness", complete innocence. I wish you luck in your search and I know you'll be doing great things.

Also, I hope you find a teacher that just right for you and I wish you luck on that journey. I no it's a very personal thing and you have to be careful who you select.

If you don't mind me asking. What happened between you and your old teacher?

[razorsedgezen]

Sept 28, 2008 20:36:58 GMT -5 @Anonymous said:

There is never a time when I need my Ego. Difficult to part from no doubt, but persist I must.

Dear anonymous friend,

I can't help but wonder about the contradiction in your very statement that "there is never a time when I need my Ego". We can go on for as long as we like about the peculiarities of language and how we simply can't escape the words "I" and "mine" if we're to convey personal viewpoints in a way that makes sense. However, it would be prudent to examine what exactly is meant by "I" and what exactly is meant by "Ego"? What's the difference? Is it this "I" that persists in parting from no doubt, or something else?

Chris

[sophia]

Hi LightMystic,

Yes, I remember you.

Your profile says you're 13 years old. Is this the number of years you've been alive or is this the number of years since your enlightenment? For a 13 year-old you write incredibly well.

Yes, I do tend to equate individuality with Ego. When I think of people getting rid of Egos, I imagine them losing their individuality. If everyone lost this, we'd all be the same, just a bunch of robots or zombies. How would we communicate? Who would want to communicate with someone without a personality?

I can understand people wanting to get rid of the racing thoughts we have in our minds, in order to be more aware, but I don't understand why people want to lose who they are.

I've looked into Advaita during some of my explorations and to me the idea of losing the Ego seems unattainable. I feel like we would still have it but that we could perhaps use it only when we need it.

In other words, we involve ourselves in maya when we need to or want to, but detach from it and close our thoughts down to experience the awareness, but since we have physical bodies to carry around, we are tied down to the physical world until we die, and thus are stuck with Ego until then. But like I said, I believe it is possible to temporarily push Ego away. And besides, having an Ego does not change the fact that we have a Higher Self.

I don't know much, though. I've only barely looked into this. There is an overwhelming abundance of religions and philosophies that the paths to choose are many. I'm still looking for the path that fits me. Currently that seems to involve esotericism. But, since esotericism means "hidden", it is possible that one of the hidden Truths is that we CAN get rid of Ego. But I won't know until I know, ya know?

Oh, yes, before I forget, to answer your question, I worked with a Teacher of the Perennial Tradition for a couple weeks, and during those couple weeks I broke a toe, something was going on internally that required pain pills and muscle relaxers (not because of the toe - still don't know what it was) and also traveled out of town for three days. The Teacher turned me away because I could not devote all my time to my spiritual pursuit. He said I had no motivation. I thought that a couple weeks was not enough time for him to come to this conclusion, but I can't force someone to work with me. We're either compatible or we're not. At first I forgot self-control and reacted angrily in the face of rejection, but now I'm over it and ready to find someone who doesn't react like this to my imperfections.

Thanks for writing.

[sophia]

Anonymous,

I would never expect anyone to just hand me the answers. But I do think it is possible that another can point the way, or inspire us to find the answers for ourselves.

[Peter]

Hmm, I'm sorry to say that I have eaten a few unripened peaches in my time. It's a lesson that took me a while to learn.

I'm also stumbling around issues of Ego and No-Self at the moment and questioning the whole thing. I mean, imagine that there's some great hypnotist who could convince you that - "None of this is real, it's all illusion, you yourself don't really exist", and you could really experience that - not having a self - and being actually happier in yourself because it doesn't really matter. Is that a good thing? What if it does really matter? I guess that's where we have free will - in deciding whether to try to change the world for the better because it does really matter, or leave it alone because it doesn't.

sophia said:

When I think of people getting rid of Egos, I imagine them losing their individuality. If everyone lost this, we'd all be the same, just a bunch of robots or zombies. How would we communicate?

I wouldn't know about getting to "No Self", but I had an experience of "One Self" where I lost my Ego and yes, in that, we were all the same. I would look at a stranger and be happy because we're intimately connected, and then realise that since we are - in fact - one and the same person, then there's nothing I'd need to communicate to them. So I was both completely connected to everyone and incredibly lonely at the same time. Still writing about that elsewhere...

I liked LightMystic's point about integrating absolute and relative. For me the advantage of any sort of spiritual accomplishment would be to choose the view of the world that's appropriate to what you're "trying" to accomplish at the time. Buying a train ticket is incredibly difficult when you're convinced you and the ticket vendor are one and the same person!

Chris, do you also post on the Mystic Visions Discussion Forums?

LightMystic - I believe you are only 13 posts old, not years?