What about spiritual experiences??

[skyblue]

I am still confused by spiritual experiences. As a child and into my thirities, I had several spiritual experiences, some quite profound. Are they part of the illusion as well? At the time I had them, they felt more real than 'normal consciousness'.

I only had one experience where the "I" of me disappeared but I would classify it as the most profound. Isn't that a spiritual experience?

Sky

[zendancer]

Jan 13, 2010 8:00:03 GMT -5 skyblue said:

I am still confused by spiritual experiences. As a child and into my thirities, I had several spiritual experiences, some quite profound. Are they part of the illusion as well? At the time I had them, they felt more real than 'normal consciousness'.

I only had one experience where the "I" of me disappeared but I would classify it as the most profound. Isn't that a spiritual experience?

Sky

Skyblue: The illusion that we primarily refer to is the illusion of separateness. Oneness is all there is, but oneness is dynamic. It grows itself into human beings and sees itself as well as thinks about itself. Oneness looks out of each person's eyes and experiences itself in an infinite number of ways. Because oneness has the power of imagination, it often imagines that it is a human being separate from the rest of itself. It also imagines that the universe is composed of things and events happening in space and time. Sometimes it sees through these illusions and wakes up to itself. It then looks around and only sees itself. It can still imagine, but it doesn't confuse what it imagines with the truth.

Human beings have all kinds of experiences. Like you, some of the mystical experiences I've had seemed more real than any other experiences in my life. They had a kind of super-realistic aspect. They may have felt this way because thought was temporarily suspended and there was nothing being filtered through the mind. I can remember childhood experiences during which this sort of vividness was present coupled with a deep sense of mysteriousness and intimacy. This is probably why most adults sense that they lost something precious during the transition from childhood to adulthood.

From a mythological perspective we might imagine the universe as a playground for oneness through which it plays an infinite number of games. One of its games is hide and seek, but it has no one to play the game with other than itself. It therefore hides itself from itself, searches for itself, and occasionally finds itself. Along the way it has all kinds of wild and crazy experiences. It blows itself up with bombs, gets sick, goes crazy, works in factories, falls in love, fall out of love, interacts with itself in countless other forms, has deep spiritual experiences, gets lost in deep illusions, imagines angels and demons, worships the idea of oneness, scares itself, loves itself, hates itself, and so forth.

Your spiritual experiences were as real as any other experiences in your life, and felt more real, but they were just experiences happening to oneness. The illusion is that those experiences were happening to Skyblue.

[Portto]

Wonderful post (for me), ZD!

We can see everything as a mystical experience, until the mind memorizes it and labels it as "normal."

Someone who was not able to see for a long while will have a mystical experience the first time he/she sees. The same goes for movement, taste, touch, etc.

An experience stops being spiritual only when the mind thinks it "already knows."

This is just another point of view... I don't really have any spiritual experiences, but I can turn anything into one by forgetting what it is. For example, I "forgot" what eating an apple is like, and the first time I had one I suddenly felt I was inside the apple chewing away at the walls. Is this a spiritual experience, or what?

[lightmystic]

Hey skyblue,

I know what you mean about them feeling more real. One way of talking about it is that there is constant perception, and it's the mind that divides and provides the details to give us an apparently separate "world". Whether it's the individual mind or the cosmic mind is just another distinction made by the "mind".

And so all experience come and go, but there is that infinite Awareness that underlies, that is what is being perceived through. And recognizing it's infinite and eternal nature brings a feeling of rightness, completeness, bliss, peace, enjoyment, etc. etc.. In other words, recognizing the eternalness and closeness of our own Awareness brings spiritual experiences. So there is a feeling of more realness because the eternal is being recognized, and that can always go on. The eternal will never not be there. So, in a sense, it's a more reliable experience than any other experience, because it will never not be there. That said, the results of that recognition, the experiences that come out of that, change dynamically, highlighting different aspects of itself. So there's no one constant experience on the surface level that all always continues, even though there is a deeper level recognition that never goes away....
The way that that recognition manifests itself on the surface and what it feels like are definitely subject to change, even moment to moment. And it's the recognition and internal resolution of that which actually is what breaks the cycle of having an amazing spiritual experience and then it never returning. Initially, there is this amazing experience, and then we try to hold on to the specific qualities that manifest from that recognition (like love, bliss, universalness, etc.), rather than realizing that it's just a natural result of the recognition in that moment, and it's the recognition itself, the moment itself (as opposed to what the moment "looked like") that are ultimately what's really important. "The moment" (as opposed to what the moment looked like at any given time) can be said to be the thing that never changes. It's always there, all encompassing, etc.... And recognizing that allows us to let the positive spiritual experiences just flow through, and allow the negative experiences to just flow through. That flowing through creates this flow of being that is wonderful, and keeps any feeling from getting stuck....
Sorry, this is perhaps starting to sound a bit abstract. Do you see what I'm saying?

Also, as ZD said, it's not that the world itself isn't real, it's just that it's not really limited or separate. So what most people consider the world to be is the illusion. It's not unreal, it's just not what people think it is....

Jan 13, 2010 8:00:03 GMT -5 skyblue said:

I am still confused by spiritual experiences. As a child and into my thirities, I had several spiritual experiences, some quite profound. Are they part of the illusion as well? At the time I had them, they felt more real than 'normal consciousness'.

I only had one experience where the "I" of me disappeared but I would classify it as the most profound. Isn't that a spiritual experience?

Sky

[skyblue]

"The illusion is that those experiences were happening to Skyblue. "

I like that. Thank you Zendancer.

[skyblue]

"Whether it's the individual mind or the cosmic mind is just another distinction made by the "mind". "

This is what i have to keep reminding myself.

Thanks LightMystic.

[jimmytantric]

In order to have a spiritual experience(which is a word), there has to be a you which there is not-so good luck with that. And don't believe all the wise people who tell you you can,t bypass the physical-because there's only nothing which is everything. There's no steps to what you already ARE. Space and time are creations of thought.Good luck.

[zendancer]

Jimmy: Spiritual experiences happen, but they happen to no one. From another perspective nothing ever happens. You are certainly correct that there are no steps to who we are and that there is no time or space. In fact, this morning I began the patent process for some things I've thought up that will highlight this truth while producing a lot of laughter in the process. I'll keep everyone posted on how that goes. Cheers.

[eputkonen]

Jan 13, 2010 8:00:03 GMT -5 skyblue said:

I am still confused by spiritual experiences. As a child and into my thirities, I had several spiritual experiences, some quite profound. Are they part of the illusion as well? At the time I had them, they felt more real than 'normal consciousness'.

I only had one experience where the "I" of me disappeared but I would classify it as the most profound. Isn't that a spiritual experience?

Sky

Spiritual experiences come and go...and they are a part of the illusion.

What does not come and go?

[lightmystic]

For me, there is just What Is. And What Is is constantly having ever changing spiritual experiences. And it appears to be that, no matter how cosmic one has recognized themselves to have already been, no matter how clearly it's recognized that there never was and individual, no matter how completely the individual has gone away, the function of individuality (i.e. a story of some sort) remains. It's just that the story is no longer believed. And that story can even be of lack of individuality, of no self, of no experience. But really those are pointing to something behind the story. But they can be the story as well. Got to have SOME story or there is no experience at all.

But there is something that remains when the identification with limitation drops.... and that gives rise to a safety, appreciation, completeness, etc. that cannot seem to go away. Sure, the amount of it can go up and down, but the recognition of that which never changes, when seen at the most fundamental visceral level, cannot be undone.....

But experiences continue, as Life experiencing Life. It's not like there WAS an individual but there's not now (although that can certainly be the experience at first). Rather, there NEVER was an individual and it's only been realized what's already BEEN going on this whole time. So it doesn't mean that, just because there is no separate individual, there is no experience. Of course experiences can happen to no one. That's what's been going on this whole time! We just finally realized it on a gut/instinctual level.

Jan 15, 2010 5:57:40 GMT -5 jimmytantric said:

In order to have a spiritual experience(which is a word), there has to be a you which there is not-so good luck with that. And don't believe all the wise people who tell you you can,t bypass the physical-because there's only nothing which is everything. There's no steps to what you already ARE. Space and time are creations of thought.Good luck.

[skyblue]

Rather, there NEVER was an individual and it's only been realized what's already BEEN going on this whole time

That's the sentence that really spoke to me.

Thank you LightMystic.

Sky

[lightmystic]

You are quite welcome.

Jan 20, 2010 14:21:42 GMT -5 skyblue said:

Rather, there NEVER was an individual and it's only been realized what's already BEEN going on this whole time

That's the sentence that really spoke to me.

Thank you LightMystic.

Sky

[Portto]

Sometimes, especially when I walk in the woods, I have some sort of flashbacks of being an animal (wolf, deer, bear, hawk, squirrel, may bug, etc).
Could this be a spiritual experience? LOL

[circussmith]

Frankly sky I think the most important thing is that you ask the question. By that I mean it shows that you are at least curious as to what "reality" is and, conversely, what "illusion" is. At a certain level, or stage, observation is one of the most important things we can do.

As for your question, (just my opinions and observations) it is difficult to say if an experience is real. The question, I would think, is what experienced it and was that real. Which naturally brings us back to self observation.

[skyblue]

"The question, I would think, is what experienced it and was that real. Which naturally brings us back to self observation. "

Thanks for the feedback CS.

Sky