Anja re-birthed herself as BillFromTexas

[Deleted]

Sept 15, 2016 20:11:58 GMT -5 billfromtexas said:

"If you know that there is no such thing as enlightenment, you're enlightened." (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

Having become acquainted with the bright and aflame,
I went to church to enquire, wtf.
Church after church tried to Own-Me so I went to a Spiritualist Church to see if anyone there knew wtf.
There I became involved in a mystery that screwed the life out of me.

My I got lost.

Without loosing, one cannot start again
Getting-it-correct, the name of the game.

It is it.

[billfromtexas]

Sept 15, 2016 20:23:13 GMT -5 @alfio said:

Sept 15, 2016 20:11:58 GMT -5 billfromtexas said:

"If you know that there is no such thing as enlightenment, you're enlightened." (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

Having become acquainted with the bright and aflame,
I went to church to enquire, wtf.
Church after church tried to Own-Me so I went to a Spiritualist Church to see if anyone there knew wtf.
There I became involved in a mystery that screwed the life out of me.

My I got lost.

Without loosing, one cannot start again
Getting-it-correct is the name of the game.

It is it.

Yes!

Edit:

"In order to know oneself, one needs to know what/who one is not." (Sri Nisardadatta Maharaj...paraphrased...)

Edit II:

"My guru told me, "you are THAT", and I believed him. It took not more than three years for me to know that he was right." (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj...paraphrased...)


Edit III:

As I was just a little child
my parents told me,
"you can not just go there and play in their garden. That's their property."
I asked them, "why not?"
And they said, "it's some law. They own it."
And I asked, "what does it mean, they own it?"
And they said, "they claim they can do with it what they want."
And I asked, "they don't want me to play with them?"
And they said, "unfortunately, we assume they don't."
And I asked, "but why not?"
And they said, "Most likely because they are idiots."

[Deleted]

Sept 15, 2016 20:25:26 GMT -5 billfromtexas said:

Sept 15, 2016 20:23:13 GMT -5 @alfio said:

Having become acquainted with the bright and aflame,
I went to church to enquire, wtf.
Church after church tried to Own-Me so I went to a Spiritualist Church to see if anyone there knew wtf.
There I became involved in a mystery that screwed the life out of me.

My I got lost.

Without loosing, one cannot start again
Getting-it-correct is the name of the game.

It is it.

Yes!

Edit:

"In order to know oneself, one needs to know what/who one is not." (Sri Nisardadatta Maharaj...paraphrased...)

Edit II:

"My guru told me, "you are THAT", and I believed him. It took not more than three years for me to know that he was right." (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj...paraphrased...)


Edit III:

As I was just a little child
my parents told me,
"you can not just go there and play in their garden. That's their property."
I asked them, "why not?"
And they said, "it's some law. They own it."
And I asked, "what does it mean, they own it?"
And they said, "they claim they can do with it what they want."
And I asked, "they don't want me to play with them?"
And they said, "unfortunately, we assume they don't."
And I asked, "but why not?"
And they said, "Most likely because they are idiots."

Am onto this assumptive-quality in my book.
ty you for the niz stuffing.

Quite a few early Cultures were free of this disease of the mind.
I figured the Aborigine, when they left the Northern Hemisphere, came south with-out it, they seeing what it were doing to the other groups North.  Like Seriousness, assumption is contagious(transferable)

[tenka]

Hows it going living inside your own thread?

I'll try and slip peters key from his key chain when he is not looking and let you out ..

[billfromtexas]

Sept 17, 2016 13:53:32 GMT -5 tenka said:

Hows it going living inside your own thread?

I'll try and slip peters key from his key chain when he is not looking and let you out ..

I feel like a bengal tiger in a zoo here. The food is pretty good but I miss hunting and playing with my mates.

Thanks for visiting me.

[billfromtexas]

Andrew said:

"Relatively, contexts are hierarchical, but absolutely, they are not. Within the absolute context, it's not that one context is a little bit more true than other...no matter what context it is, it's not True.

The absolute transcends the relative by definition, but this creates a paradox. It means that they are equal. It means that emptiness is form, and form is emptiness. It means the relative is valid as the absolute. It means that it's ALL Divine, it's ALL Sacred, it's ALL God. There is not not one aspect that is more or less God than any other aspect."

Enigma said:

"Too much caffeine, Andy. Ceriously."


Andrew said:

"I let your other little comment about spinning slide, but with this one, no...you are wrong. This is important (relatively speaking). You sometimes speak of god godding so I will put it in those terms.

There is no aspect of creation that is any more or any less god. The murderer is god and the hero is god. The snake is god and the squirrel is god. The rock is god and the tree is god. God as the absolute, transcends any relative aspect by definition, and yet is not greater than or more valid than any aspect....because it is still god.

So the absolute transcends the relative, but in the transcending, the relative becomes as valid as the absolute. It's a paradox...you are gonna have to deal with it.

Practically, the relative aspect of who I am doesnt shy away from the relative (because ultimately it is still god). So I will still engage with ideas of right and wrong, good and evil, better and worse, truth and lie. I dont shy away from the personal aspect of who I am. However, there is a deeper understanding that all is one, that all is god, and therefore that all differences and judgements are temporary and contextual."

Read more: spiritualteachers.proboards.com/thread/4132/world?page=5455#ixzz4KckkZCsU


If all is god then also nothing is god, Andrew. It is illogical to first say everthing is god, what ever that term "god" is refering to, and then take the easy way out when getting challenged by saying, "well, it's a pradox". If everything is god, then there is no "absolute" context. You can not logically state that there are two different contexts, the relative and the absolute, when you say that all is god. And then, when questioned, say, "it's a paradox".

"The paradox is the last sparkle of a rotten mind." (Settembrini in Thomas Mann's novel Der Zauberberg...freely translated by me...)

In my eyes it is more (intellectually) honest to either refer to god as not being everything or arguing that there is no god, whatsoever. To say "all is god" is just like saying: Everything is everything. It is a hidden tautology and does not explain anything. And even if some famous sages have argued that point in the past, it does not mean they got it all right. It just means they argued that point and nobody could challenge their point at that time. Or nobody would do that because they have been too famous to be questioned.

In summery, here are the three possiblities:

1.) All is god.

2.) Nothing is god. There is no god.

3.) God exists, but is not everything. God does have qualities/attributes and does not contain everything but just certain particular characteristics/attributes/qualities.

And point one and two are the same in essence. But point two is intellectually more honest than point one and does not contradict itself by bringing up the paradox-excuse to explain away the contradictions.

Point three is what many religions are all about. There is a god, but god is not everything and has qualities/attributes/characteristics. Different religions talk about different qualities when they talk about god.

My personal stance is: If, for example, Joseph Stalin was god just like I am, then I refuse to be god totally. I have nothing to do with god then, whatsoever.

[andrew]

Sept 18, 2016 11:02:24 GMT -5 billfromtexas said:

Sept 17, 2016 13:53:32 GMT -5 tenka said:

Hows it going living inside your own thread?

I'll try and slip peters key from his key chain when he is not looking and let you out ..

I feel like a bengal tiger in a zoo here. The food is pretty good but I miss hunting and playing with my mates.

Thanks for visiting me.

Looks to me like there might be a glimmer of hope for you. Maybe if you made some promises.....?

[billfromtexas]

Sept 18, 2016 11:18:24 GMT -5 andrew said:

Sept 18, 2016 11:02:24 GMT -5 billfromtexas said:

I feel like a bengal tiger in a zoo here. The food is pretty good but I miss hunting and playing with my mates.

Thanks for visiting me.

Looks to me like there might be a glimmer of hope for you. Maybe if you made some promises.....?

Hope for what? And what promises should I make or should I have made?

I don't promise anything. I just play by the rules, if I know them. And if the rules are made up as one goes along, then I need briefing about what rules currently apply here. And if that is too much to ask for because zen-masters don't lay out the rules openly and don't argue what rules are reasonalbe and what rules are just not, then I think I'm in some sort of unpredictable and chaotic realm, where anything goes when said so by the "rulers" and "leaders" of such place, who have the ability to delete what is not in line with their (made up) paradigm.

....red-queen alert...kinda sorta...

Thanks for visiting me.

[billfromtexas]

Andrew said:

"Stop and read what I said again please.

I am NOT arguing with your model. I am not trying to tell you that Consciousnes-appearances are false.

I am saying that you know that it is true that your glasses help you to see better. If you didn't know that was true, you wouldn't have got them to start with, and you wouldn't put them on.

I'm STILL not saying there that what you are saying is wrong or false. I'm saying that you experience knowing more to be true than you are saying, regardless of whether it is true or not. You know it is true that India is hot in summer. You know it is true that if you are hungry, then food will make that better. You know it is true that it is better to go pee before going on a long distance car journey There are literally thousands of things you experience knowing to be true.

Please read that again before replying.

Edit: I'm not trying to tell you what IS true, I am trying to tell you what you experience as knowing to be true.

Do you see the difference?"

Gopal said:

"Oh ok."

Andrew said:

"You see, at no point have I tried to tell you that Consciousness-appearances is false. I have challenged your idea of what constitutes an appearance, but that is about as far as I went. I've just talking about what you know to be true, whether you know it to be true that appearances appear, and whether you know it to be true that Gopal lives in India. I'm not very interested in what IS true. I'm just interested in your experience of knowing what is true. Yes there are spiritual truths that you know, but there are also the day to day knowings. In your job there must be thousands of experiences of knowing what is true in relation to computer programming. I'm not saying they ARE 'the truth', again I'm talking about your experience of knowing they are true. There's a subtle but significant difference there."

Read more: spiritualteachers.proboards.com/thread/4132/world?page=5467#ixzz4Kcy699GY


Andrew, your model is not any better than Gopals model. And here is why:

It is just as illogical and unreasonable as Gopals. The both of you contradict yourselfs and then have to come up with more illogical explainations for why what you say is true. The difference between Andrew and Gopal's models is that Gopal does not acknowledge the relative context and Andrew is saying that there are two contexts, the absolute and the realitve, although he agrees that "Consciousness appears", which is like saying: there is something and not just mere nothing. That's true. But it does not explain anything why that is and how comes that there is something and not mere nothing.

Gopal don't even tries to explain why and how comes that there is something and not mere nothing, while Andrew goes to great length to explain that there are two different contexts, the relative and the absolute, while at the same time he proclaims that all is god. Once again, if all is god, then there can not be an absolute context and a relative one. That would be illogical. If all is god, then there only is the absolute context. Which is what Gopals says.

[andrew]

Sept 18, 2016 12:06:16 GMT -5 billfromtexas said:

Andrew said:

"Stop and read what I said again please.

I am NOT arguing with your model. I am not trying to tell you that Consciousnes-appearances are false.

I am saying that you know that it is true that your glasses help you to see better. If you didn't know that was true, you wouldn't have got them to start with, and you wouldn't put them on.

I'm STILL not saying there that what you are saying is wrong or false. I'm saying that you experience knowing more to be true than you are saying, regardless of whether it is true or not. You know it is true that India is hot in summer. You know it is true that if you are hungry, then food will make that better. You know it is true that it is better to go pee before going on a long distance car journey There are literally thousands of things you experience knowing to be true.

Please read that again before replying.

Edit: I'm not trying to tell you what IS true, I am trying to tell you what you experience as knowing to be true.

Do you see the difference?"

Gopal said:

"Oh ok."

Andrew said:

"You see, at no point have I tried to tell you that Consciousness-appearances is false. I have challenged your idea of what constitutes an appearance, but that is about as far as I went. I've just talking about what you know to be true, whether you know it to be true that appearances appear, and whether you know it to be true that Gopal lives in India. I'm not very interested in what IS true. I'm just interested in your experience of knowing what is true. Yes there are spiritual truths that you know, but there are also the day to day knowings. In your job there must be thousands of experiences of knowing what is true in relation to computer programming. I'm not saying they ARE 'the truth', again I'm talking about your experience of knowing they are true. There's a subtle but significant difference there."

Read more: spiritualteachers.proboards.com/thread/4132/world?page=5467#ixzz4Kcy699GY


Andrew, your model is not any better than Gopals model. And here is why:

It is just as illogical and unreasonable as Gopals. The both of you contradict yourselfs and then have to come up with more illogical explainations for why what you say is true. The difference between Andrew and Gopal's models is that Gopal does not acknowledge the relative context and Andrew is saying that there are two contexts, the absolute and the realitve, although he agrees that "Consciousness appears", which is like saying: there is something and not just mere nothing. That's true. But it does not explain anything why that is and how comes that there is something and not mere nothing.

Gopal don't even tries to explain why and how comes that there is something and not mere nothing, while Andrew goes to great length to explain that there are two different contexts, the relative and the absolute, while at the same time he proclaims that all is god. Once again, if all is god, then there can not be an absolute context and a relative one. That would be illogical. If all is god, then there only is the absolute context. Which is what Gopals says.

It's not logical, it's a paradox (I know you love them).

I don't like the word 'illusion' but I will use it here. There is God, and there is also the illusion of 'Not-God'. To put that another way, there is only One, but there is also the illusion of Two (and out of the illusion of Twoness is born many)

And if the relative is an illusion, the absolute is all that is real. At which point the idea of absolute and relative falls apart (and the paradox dissolves) and usefully so.

The idea of absolute and relative contexts is just a tool.

[billfromtexas]

Sept 18, 2016 12:27:27 GMT -5 andrew said:

Sept 18, 2016 12:06:16 GMT -5 billfromtexas said:

Andrew said:

"Stop and read what I said again please.

I am NOT arguing with your model. I am not trying to tell you that Consciousnes-appearances are false.

I am saying that you know that it is true that your glasses help you to see better. If you didn't know that was true, you wouldn't have got them to start with, and you wouldn't put them on.

I'm STILL not saying there that what you are saying is wrong or false. I'm saying that you experience knowing more to be true than you are saying, regardless of whether it is true or not. You know it is true that India is hot in summer. You know it is true that if you are hungry, then food will make that better. You know it is true that it is better to go pee before going on a long distance car journey There are literally thousands of things you experience knowing to be true.

Please read that again before replying.

Edit: I'm not trying to tell you what IS true, I am trying to tell you what you experience as knowing to be true.

Do you see the difference?"

Gopal said:

"Oh ok."

Andrew said:

"You see, at no point have I tried to tell you that Consciousness-appearances is false. I have challenged your idea of what constitutes an appearance, but that is about as far as I went. I've just talking about what you know to be true, whether you know it to be true that appearances appear, and whether you know it to be true that Gopal lives in India. I'm not very interested in what IS true. I'm just interested in your experience of knowing what is true. Yes there are spiritual truths that you know, but there are also the day to day knowings. In your job there must be thousands of experiences of knowing what is true in relation to computer programming. I'm not saying they ARE 'the truth', again I'm talking about your experience of knowing they are true. There's a subtle but significant difference there."

Read more: spiritualteachers.proboards.com/thread/4132/world?page=5467#ixzz4Kcy699GY


Andrew, your model is not any better than Gopals model. And here is why:

It is just as illogical and unreasonable as Gopals. The both of you contradict yourselfs and then have to come up with more illogical explainations for why what you say is true. The difference between Andrew and Gopal's models is that Gopal does not acknowledge the relative context and Andrew is saying that there are two contexts, the absolute and the realitve, although he agrees that "Consciousness appears", which is like saying: there is something and not just mere nothing. That's true. But it does not explain anything why that is and how comes that there is something and not mere nothing.

Gopal don't even tries to explain why and how comes that there is something and not mere nothing, while Andrew goes to great length to explain that there are two different contexts, the relative and the absolute, while at the same time he proclaims that all is god. Once again, if all is god, then there can not be an absolute context and a relative one. That would be illogical. If all is god, then there only is the absolute context. Which is what Gopals says.

It's not logical, it's a paradox (I know you love them).

I don't like the word 'illusion' but I will use it here. There is God, and there is also the illusion of 'Not-God'. To put that another way, there is only One, but there is also the illusion of Two (and out of the illusion of Twoness is born many)

And if the relative is an illusion, the absolute is all that is real. At which point the idea of absolute and relative falls apart (and the paradox dissolves) and usefully so.

The idea of absolute and relative contexts is just a tool.

I think I know what you try to explain here, Andrew. But I'm wondering who your advaita-vedanta teacher is. My teacher/friend, James Swartz, would take all the blame for me explaining a-dvaita vedanta the wrong way and that's the way it is supposed to be, because a true real old-school advaita-vedanta teacher does not accept a student, who is not able to come up with a good way to explain what advaita-vedanta is all about. And now I try to explain why you are not in line with old-school traditional advaita-vedanta in what you are saying, here:

1.) "There is only one"...is NOT what traditional old-school advaita-vedanta is saying. Not-two and One don't have the same meaning. A-dvaita does not mean One. It means not-two. Not two could also mean three, four, five, six, and so on. Right?

2.) "The illusion of Two...and out of the illusion of Twoness is born many" is also not in line with it. The world is not an illusion. It's called mithya. Mithya means: it is real and un-real at the same time. Which sounds like a paradox but it isn't because the translation James is giving, mithya as being real and un-real at the same time, is not accurate, in my eyes. Mithya means, I think: It is like Disney-land, in which there are miniature citys of european citys. They are real in the context of Disney-land but they are not real citys in Europe. They are just mithya. Representations of the real but not the real thing. Models of the real thing but not the real thing itself.

3.) What you call the relative and the absolute context is like this: the relationship between a representation of something real, for example a model of a boat, and the real thing, a real boat. Both exist in the same reality, but one is a mere model and the other one is the real boat of which there is a model being made of.

And no, the relative and the absolute do not "fall apart", because they don't have to. Like I explained above. They are still two seperate things, appearing in reality, but seperate from each other but are refering to the same thing.

Does that make sense? If not blame James Swartz for picking a lousy student/friend like I am.

[tenka]

Sept 18, 2016 11:02:24 GMT -5 billfromtexas said:

Sept 17, 2016 13:53:32 GMT -5 tenka said:

Hows it going living inside your own thread?

I'll try and slip peters key from his key chain when he is not looking and let you out ..

I feel like a bengal tiger in a zoo here. The food is pretty good but I miss hunting and playing with my mates.

Thanks for visiting me.

I think you will get some time off for good behaviour   ..

Your not pretending to be good are you?   ..

[andrew]

Sept 18, 2016 13:41:26 GMT -5 billfromtexas said:

Sept 18, 2016 12:27:27 GMT -5 andrew said:

It's not logical, it's a paradox (I know you love them).

I don't like the word 'illusion' but I will use it here. There is God, and there is also the illusion of 'Not-God'. To put that another way, there is only One, but there is also the illusion of Two (and out of the illusion of Twoness is born many)

And if the relative is an illusion, the absolute is all that is real. At which point the idea of absolute and relative falls apart (and the paradox dissolves) and usefully so.

The idea of absolute and relative contexts is just a tool.

I think I know what you try to explain here, Andrew. But I'm wondering who your advaita-vedanta teacher is. My teacher/friend, James Swartz, would take all the blame for me explaining a-dvaita vedanta the wrong way and that's the way it is supposed to be, because a true real old-school advaita-vedanta teacher does not accept a student, who is not able to come up with a good way to explain what advaita-vedanta is all about. And now I try to explain why you are not in line with old-school traditional advaita-vedanta in what you are saying, here:

1.) "There is only one"...is NOT what traditional old-school advaita-vedanta is saying. Not-two and One don't have the same meaning. A-dvaita does not mean One. It means not-two. Not two could also mean three, four, five, six, and so on. Right?

2.) "The illusion of Two...and out of the illusion of Twoness is born many" is also not in line with it. The world is not an illusion. It's called mithya. Mithya means: it is real and un-real at the same time. Which sounds like a paradox but it isn't because the translation James is giving, mithya as being real and un-real at the same time, is not accurate, in my eyes. Mithya means, I think: It is like Disney-land, in which there are miniature citys of european citys. They are real in the context of Disney-land but they are not real citys in Europe. They are just mithya. Representations of the real but not the real thing. Models of the real thing but not the real thing itself.

3.) What you call the relative and the absolute context is like this: the relationship between a representation of something real, for example a model of a boat, and the real thing, a real boat. Both exist in the same reality, but one is a mere model and the other one is the real boat of which there is a model being made of.

And no, the relative and the absolute do not "fall apart", because they don't have to. Like I explained above. They are still two seperate things, appearing in reality, but seperate from each other but are refering to the same thing.

Does that make sense? If not blame James Swartz for picking a lousy student/friend like I am.

Some of it made sense...seems like it would be more fun to blame you than James, though I am not blind to my own intellectual limits...so we can place some of the blame on me too.

I've never had an advaita-vedanta teacher, over the years I have read a good deal of what most of the 'big names' have said (most the Indian dudes, and some of the modern Western gang, but I don't know much at all about James). By the time I read them, the bulk of my work was done, so Advaita-vedanta teachers gave me an interesting framework to understand what was already mostly true for me.

I also wouldn't describe what I am offering here as non-dual. I can talk that language if I want to, but more often than not I don't see it as helpful. What I offer as a model for existence, is more spiritual than non-dual. At this point I cannot imagine a context in which I would recommend a non-dual teacher to anyone. My opinion is that by and large, it creates more problems than it resolves. Spiritual work on the other hand is practical, and requires one to get their hands dirty in life itself. That's not to say that I see spiritual paradigms as more 'true' than the non-dual paradigm.

I didn't quite go so far as to describe 'the world' as an illusion. What I said is that the many is born out OF the illusion of Twoness. Prior to this (illusionary) cut between Creator and Created, there is just undifferentiated existence. Twoness provides the potential for experience through the gift of individuality, which is necessary in order for there to be an experience. Experience itself is as real as it comes, and for all intents and purposes, the world is real. However, when the experience is over, undifferentiated existence is the case, and fundamentally, we are that (I refuse to capitalize the 't' )

The absolute and relative do not fall apart, but their value as concepts and tools should fall apart at some point in the process. They are useful for understanding and integration, but have no business in our day to day experience. Non-duality MAY be useful for challenging the kind of spiritual model I offered there, because it invites us to see through models of existence such as this one. The problem is....well I could talk about that a lot.

[Deleted]

Sept 17, 2016 13:53:32 GMT -5 tenka said:

Hows it going living inside your own thread?

I'll try and slip peters key from his key chain when he is not looking and let you out ..

I first saw this silly nonscence in a Spiritualist Site, where the born-a-gain xtians came aboard in NZ and complained to Aussie management that their feelings were hurt by some of the more adventurous posters.

Something about WHINGING, corporations have no time for.
"Cut off their Head if they offend those we are collecting in our Trade Me site!" is the go.

Its a boys thing... mainly.

In the case of spilt-yogurt, its best to turn on the firehose and poke it where the sun don't shine me thinks.

[tenka]

Ruuuuuuuuuuun, Sheeeeee's escaped!!

Don't forget to batten down the hatches at night   ..

Always make sure if you venture out at night you do so in two's