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Post by andrew on Oct 12, 2023 8:35:50 GMT -5
Okay, what I mean is that, given the specific structures of this human dimensional reality, it's inadequate as an explanation to say that a baby that suffers/dies has vibrationally created/attracted that. Even if I accept that it's true at a higher level, it's still inadequate, because many souls aren't here to explore that higher level truth. These babies are here to experience brutality. That was hard for me to say, but brutality is a valid exploration in this dimensional reality. Then again, so is accountability! So my view of what you are saying is that it's all true in a higher sense, I'm likely to be inclined to talk about experience in terms of themes/explorations, just as much as I might be inclined to talk about the higher truths you are talking about. For many folks (including me), forgiveness has been an excellent tool. Compassion and empathy too. Even if it's misconceived at the higher level truths you are offering, it's still usaul within our vibrational reality. In Abe terms, no one comes here to suffer, but some come here to experience extreme contrast and come only for a short but intense ride. In Seth terms, no one comes here to suffer, but some come here to only go that far, like a test run, and then withdraw again when they experienced what they wanted to experience (I think there as some quotes on that topic in the Seth thread). Another explanation you often hear is that of a theater production, i.e. you chose your roles before you come here and then you play out your (self)assigned roles. Which means you chose your parents and you have agreements with the people you love and hate, the people that help you and harm you etc. and when you're done, you do it all over again because it was such a dramatic play, but this time you choose opposite roles, the perpetrator now plays the victim and the victim now plays the perpetrator. Now, you'll see that these different explanations all cater to different levels of understanding. The lowest level of understanding with the greatest potential of suffering is certainly SDP's explanation. What Inavalan offered is a much higher level of explanation. I like Abe's streaming consciousness explanation, because unlike the other stories, it is already beyond separation and individual volitional actors. agree with most of that. This human reality offers very interesting type of experience. We can experience being both powerful and powerless. We can experience being helpful and helpless. We can be a King once and a beggar another time. We can be a saint one time and a sinner another time. Some are birthed here wanting to experience something specific, whereas others may want a million lives to experience a full range of humanity, with all it's polarity. Some souls really have to have their fill of polarity, and I think that partly explains the intensity of the last few years....many are trying to squeeze every ounce of drama and intense contrast they can out of the human experience. And when that's all been milked for what its worth, then well our interest will move to more gentle contrast, it will move to wanting an experience that expresses the true principles of creation e.g infinite abundance. |
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Post by andrew on Oct 12, 2023 8:38:12 GMT -5
Maybe this analogy will clarify how I see it... Let's say someone is in a play, on stage. And in that play, they are asked to forgive, or feel imposed upon, or whatever. It's not 'real'. because they are acting. And yet a good actor will connect to the role and genuinely experience those things, even though it's not real. And that's kind of how I see the human reality. It's a play...and in a sense, it's a lie - you are right, there's nothing to forgive and no imposition. And yet, playing this human role might still engender finding forgiveness, and it being useful, from within the story. And it might engender feeling imposed upon too. We can't avoid it IF those are the themes of the play, and that is our role in the story. Watts once compared the difference cultures and how they see reality. If I remember correctly, he put it this way: The idea of the world as a play or a drama comes from Hinduism. In the West, the world is seen as a construct. And in China, they see the world as an organism. So while these models have their place in making sense of creation, the truth, however, lies beyond all these different models. All these stories belong to the realm of imagination, but the truth cannot be imagined. Yes. I guess a 'Truth' pointer every few pages is good balance for the discussion lol Genuinely though, I think it's good we have them, as most folks come here fundamentally for that simplicity. |
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Post by andrew on Oct 12, 2023 8:40:14 GMT -5
Thanks. This is pretty close to what I mean by 'themes/explorations'.....what you call a 'first grader' will explore different themes to a fourth grader. I differ in that I believe that sometimes just having the experience is enough i.e a week old baby isn't going to consciously learn something profound from an experience, though the experience is still 'learned from' at another level e.g higher self, inner being, unconscious mind, oversoul....I'm not too particular about the labels. Here's a quote from Seth: Yes, good, along the lines of what I said a couple of messages back. |
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Oct 12, 2023 8:42:28 GMT -5
Reefs-Grandma, I am mindful of your political line in the sand, hence my one line reply. It's been a good discussion so far. Carry on. ++++++ Just out curiosity, how much time do you guys spend each day following the news, reading, watching, discussing? And do you check the news at a specific time of the day or do you check the news randomly around the clock? Or are some of you guys on a news detox? I have my eye out for *progressively worse*. I have a few programs I watch normally, just entertainment. I watched most of the Carolina Hurricanes first game of the season last night. If I am otherwise occupied, I usually have TV on but sound off, so I can notice if there's a story I'd be interested in, mostly heartbreaking accounts of incidents from last Saturday. Presently, this mess is still relatively small. If Hezbollah enters the fight, then we'll have a real mess. I never knew much about Harper's Ferry, just before the Civil War. Saw most of the 'Ethan Hawk' as John Brown mini series a while back. I think we might have a similar situation, presently. John Brown could not draw others into his fight, as he had planned. That came a short while later. Hopefully this stays in Gaza. Did Hamas miscalculate? I don't know that we know wtf Hamas is/was up to. |
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Post by andrew on Oct 12, 2023 8:43:24 GMT -5
Reefs-Grandma, I am mindful of your political line in the sand, hence my one line reply. It's been a good discussion so far. Carry on. ++++++ Just out curiosity, how much time do you guys spend each day following the news, reading, watching, discussing? And do you check the news at a specific time of the day or do you check the news randomly around the clock? Or are some of you guys on a news detox? It varies. A couple of weeks ago, it was almost zero. Last few days, a few hours on twitter daily (it's about the only place I go for news, though I follow a vast array of people). Though mostly, I'm not 'looking' for news per se, it's more that the movement is there to engage on a subject in a particular way, sometimes with a particular group of people. The news absorption happens as I'm doing that. |
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Oct 12, 2023 8:50:01 GMT -5
AFAIAC, sometimes s**t just happens. I think in terms of ~your being attracts your life~, rather than LOA. There is a continuum running from order to chaos. I have no problem with LOA operating on most of that continuum, say the upper 95%. One's being puts one somewhere on that continuum. At the ~top~ you find flow and synchronicities and a sense that everything is operating perfectly as it should be. Most people live somewhere in the middle. What I've been writing about, since last Saturday, poking, exploring, is the bottom 5% where chaos reigns. This is the realm of hardened criminals, terrorists, serial killers and others of the sort, they have no rules. This is where s**t can just happen. A group of the nasty guys of the 5%-and-lower have imposed their will and chaos upon some innocents of the higher continuum. I've ~battled~ ZD (mostly) over this issue for years. I don't mind calling my view a paradigm, I haven't made it up. For me it explains certain aspects of what happens. All this, in a nutshell, is why I said at some point LOA breaks down. You'll never convince me that the babies and toddlers who were decapitated are part of a natural flow of the universe, they are not responsible in any way for getting their heads cup off. They got caught up in an unnatural flow of the ~5%~ chaos. Everybody does not live at the same level of being, there's a continuum. And now we have a *more ordered group* trying to restore and maintain order, fighting the no-rules-chaos of a 5%, and lower-down to a negative 1%. You could even say the 2,3,4,5% are caught up in the really-nasty-1%. IOW, we have a terrible mess. There is no good outcome coming. I think we've past the point of a better-outcome. One problem here is that you're butting up into the limits of common sense. Common mind demands characterization of events as either random or inevitable, but reality, is neither. LOA in the way reefs explains it strikes me as sort of altogether sideways to these dichotomies. But it's still after-the-fact, an overlay, a description of a pattern that manifests. To reconcile the suffering of innocents requires a particular perspective that is transcendent of the sort of levels you're interested in. This reconciliation does not involve acceptance. It does not involve denying the intensity of the pain and suffering involved, and it does not blame the victim. It is beyond blame, even while accounting for accountability. There is no way to earn this perspective, although if you constrict your mind around refusal of what you imagine it to be, you create your own veil obscuring the possibility of it. To my eye, the least distorted conceptual hint of this perspective is ourboros' interdependent origination, but on the other hand, as Low said .. "arose the mind ...". You're not supposed to resolve this situation with mind or emotion. Never mind that it's not possible. I've never found anything the Gurdjieff teaching doesn't explain. (Above, trying to avoid the words he used, what he called the law of accident. This is why 'your being attracts your life' trumps LOA). |
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Post by andrew on Oct 12, 2023 8:54:38 GMT -5
Thanks. This is pretty close to what I mean by 'themes/explorations'.....what you call a 'first grader' will explore different themes to a fourth grader. I differ in that I believe that sometimes just having the experience is enough i.e a week old baby isn't going to consciously learn something profound from an experience, though the experience is still 'learned from' at another level e.g higher self, inner being, unconscious mind, oversoul....I'm not too particular about the labels. The levels are deceptive, however. Seems to me that Zen addresses this with multiple pointers, including "beginner's mind" and "the stink of Zen". Isn't it what new-ager's mean with "as above, so below"? Even more obvious with the Christians, and both Zen and the Christians both recognize the levels but put them in context. The core problem with the levels, of course, is self-deception and ego, but there's even something more subtly profound that that going on. yes, I've never been very comfy with the idea of 'levels' either....I've also traditionally had a problem with 'cliques', and 'levels' vaguely connects to this. I agree that in 'Zen pointer' terms, that they are deceptive, On the flip side, hierarchy is part of the diversity of life, though even there, I'd want to be very clear what a hierarchy specifically refers to e.g skill or capability or influence or.... |
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Post by andrew on Oct 12, 2023 8:56:38 GMT -5
No problem. ............ I'm built to stand alone, when need be, which is mostly always... Oh I bet you can guess the tune that played in my head.  haha now I'm curious. Frank Sinatra? |
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Post by andrew on Oct 12, 2023 9:01:50 GMT -5
Nonsense. Of course it can be explained using LOA. It's just a matter of right context. You approach it from the wrong context. Your context is too small and you also hold some erroneous beliefs about creation in general as well as the nature of reality. What's breaking down at some point is your own incoherent hotchpotch of ideas. AFAIAC, sometimes s**t just happens. I think in terms of ~your being attracts your life~, rather than LOA. There is a continuum running from order to chaos. I have no problem with LOA operating on most of that continuum, say the upper 95%. One's being puts one somewhere on that continuum. At the ~top~ you find flow and synchronicities and a sense that everything is operating perfectly as it should be. Most people live somewhere in the middle. What I've been writing about, since last Saturday, poking, exploring, is the bottom 5% where chaos reigns. This is the realm of hardened criminals, terrorists, serial killers and others of the sort, they have no rules. This is where s**t can just happen. A group of the nasty guys of the 5%-and-lower have imposed their will and chaos upon some innocents of the higher continuum. I've ~battled~ ZD (mostly) over this issue for years. I don't mind calling my view a paradigm, I haven't made it up. For me it explains certain aspects of what happens. All this, in a nutshell, is why I said at some point LOA breaks down. You'll never convince me that the babies and toddlers who were decapitated are part of a natural flow of the universe, they are not responsible in any way for getting their heads cup off. They got caught up in an unnatural flow of the ~5%~ chaos. Everybody does not live at the same level of being, there's a continuum. And now we have a *more ordered group* trying to restore and maintain order, fighting the no-rules-chaos of a 5%, and lower-down to a negative 1%. You could even say the 2,3,4,5% are caught up in the really-nasty-1%. IOW, we have a terrible mess. There is no good outcome coming. I think we've past the point of a better-outcome. My view is that things don't always go to plan for 'souls' and so there is deviation and having to adapt. So there is room for an element of surprise. In this sense, there is a quality of 'chaos' to life...we are making it up as we go along, within the boundaries of there being themes and explorations we are interested in, and an overall sense of direction. But still, ultimately no mistake. A surprise turn of events is still a welcome experience at the deepest level. |
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Oct 12, 2023 9:53:26 GMT -5
No problem. ............ I'm built to stand alone, when need be, which is mostly always... Oh I bet you can guess the tune that played in my head. |
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Oct 12, 2023 9:56:26 GMT -5
But I like this better...
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Post by laughter on Oct 13, 2023 8:51:13 GMT -5
The levels are deceptive, however. Seems to me that Zen addresses this with multiple pointers, including "beginner's mind" and "the stink of Zen". Isn't it what new-ager's mean with "as above, so below"? Even more obvious with the Christians, and both Zen and the Christians both recognize the levels but put them in context. The core problem with the levels, of course, is self-deception and ego, but there's even something more subtly profound that that going on. yes, I've never been very comfy with the idea of 'levels' either....I've also traditionally had a problem with 'cliques', and 'levels' vaguely connects to this. I agree that in 'Zen pointer' terms, that they are deceptive, On the flip side, hierarchy is part of the diversity of life, though even there, I'd want to be very clear what a hierarchy specifically refers to e.g skill or capability or influence or.... Seems to me that even human hierarchies can have their place, although I think we each share a natural aversion. |
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Post by laughter on Oct 13, 2023 8:52:03 GMT -5
Oh I bet you can guess the tune that played in my head. haha now I'm curious. Frank Sinatra? the rock/island one ...  .. I'd forgotten what a good song "still krazy" was. |
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Post by Reefs on Oct 14, 2023 8:57:32 GMT -5
It's been a good discussion so far. Carry on. ++++++ Just out curiosity, how much time do you guys spend each day following the news, reading, watching, discussing? And do you check the news at a specific time of the day or do you check the news randomly around the clock? Or are some of you guys on a news detox? There are a number of alt news sites that I check randomly during the day. One in particular comes out in the evening. These days I scan the summary of its talking points to decide if I need to watch to the video. The summary is usually enough. If it is a very busy news day I might check to see what the MSM is reporting/parroting. It's good to know what the otherside is saying and/or wants the unsuspecting public at large to believe. I used to do that too for a while, checking the news randomly during the day, but I noticed that it had a negative effect on my overall focus. So I reduced it to only once a day, in the evening. There was also a time when I didn't check the news at all, for years. And I didn't really miss anything. |
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Post by Reefs on Oct 14, 2023 9:39:05 GMT -5
Nonsense. Of course it can be explained using LOA. It's just a matter of right context. You approach it from the wrong context. Your context is too small and you also hold some erroneous beliefs about creation in general as well as the nature of reality. What's breaking down at some point is your own incoherent hotchpotch of ideas. AFAIAC, sometimes s**t just happens. I think in terms of ~your being attracts your life~, rather than LOA. There is a continuum running from order to chaos. I have no problem with LOA operating on most of that continuum, say the upper 95%. One's being puts one somewhere on that continuum. At the ~top~ you find flow and synchronicities and a sense that everything is operating perfectly as it should be. Most people live somewhere in the middle. What I've been writing about, since last Saturday, poking, exploring, is the bottom 5% where chaos reigns. This is the realm of hardened criminals, terrorists, serial killers and others of the sort, they have no rules. This is where s**t can just happen. A group of the nasty guys of the 5%-and-lower have imposed their will and chaos upon some innocents of the higher continuum. I've ~battled~ ZD (mostly) over this issue for years. I don't mind calling my view a paradigm, I haven't made it up. For me it explains certain aspects of what happens. All this, in a nutshell, is why I said at some point LOA breaks down. You'll never convince me that the babies and toddlers who were decapitated are part of a natural flow of the universe, they are not responsible in any way for getting their heads cup off. They got caught up in an unnatural flow of the ~5%~ chaos. Everybody does not live at the same level of being, there's a continuum. And now we have a *more ordered group* trying to restore and maintain order, fighting the no-rules-chaos of a 5%, and lower-down to a negative 1%. You could even say the 2,3,4,5% are caught up in the really-nasty-1%. IOW, we have a terrible mess. There is no good outcome coming. I think we've past the point of a better-outcome. LOA, the way I use that term, is "your being attracts your life"! If you reduce LOA to a serial cause and effect theory, you're missing the point. You have to look at it in the context of jiji muge (aka interdependent origination/arising) and the eternal now (aka the point of power is in the now). Well, Abe always say "these are the best of times" because they look at it from the big picture perspective, i.e. that contrast creates desires and desires summon life force and more life force flowing means greater potential for joy. The more contrast (or variety) you have, the more options you have and the more options you have the more choices you have and the more choices you have the more opportunities for joy you have. In times of heightened contrast, when you know very clearly what you absolutely do not want, you also automatically know what you absolutely do want. And here you have a choice. Either you stay focused on what you do not want and argue against it, or you turn your focus on what you actually do want and argue for that. Apparently, you chose the first option, while I chose the second option. The difference in experience between these two choices of focus is huge after a while. You see, the news give you an extremely disproportionate picture of the world in terms of what goes well and what goes wrong. You'll notice that once you get a bit around in the world, on different continents and in different cultures. There are terrible things happening, no doubt. But there are also wonderful things happening at the same time. But the news media, which lives from the attention of people like you, has to somehow get your attention and they discovered that they best get your attention with negative news, and not with facts but with emotions, and not presented in a fair and balanced way but in a highly partial and exaggerated way. So don't expect the news media to give you an accurate and balanced picture of the world, that would not be in their best interest, it would destroy their business model. So keep that mind next time you are reading or watching the news. |
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.. I'd forgotten what a good song "still krazy" was. 