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Post by Peter on May 4, 2020 2:25:01 GMT -5
I have re-emerged from the tunnel. When I go back in I will forget about coming out until I re-emerge and remember. I have been resurfacing this for years. How ever tomorrow (sleep now) I will perhaps touch a door frame! Did you, Glimmer? I was doing a Metta Bhanava practice this morning and there's some mental discourse involved, saying something like "May they be happy, may they be well". But when I let go of that so it was just still inside my head I had a vivid sensation of having been cycling a bicycle with someone holding me steady, and then that feeling of freedom and cycling on my own - or flying even. Kept my sense of quietness and presence through a run around the park and then - *$£@(&^!!! blew it just before I reached my front door. I need to re-read that Gurdijeff article, I think he said he (or was it Ouspensky) found it nearly impossible when they started. |
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Post by Peter on May 1, 2020 4:02:05 GMT -5
I'm going through quite an intense time at the moment between therapy, spiritual work with my wife and a men's support group. One group is encouraging me to get connected to my higher power and the other wants me to get in touch with my inner child. Meditating the other day I put the Higher Power directly in contact with the Inner Child and that felt very integrating, although quite busy in there! I realised that the state I get into when I feel connected to a Higher Power is one I'm familiar with from meditation. It's a coming home the self...I've spoken about this before being like watching a film in the cinema and being totally in the movie and then something bringing your attention back to your immediate surrounding and that wider context of both sitting in a cinema AND watching a movie comes into play. The Buddhists might call it Access Concentration and Gurdjieff called " Self Remembering". Gurdjieff's point is this: How can anyone achieve anything if they can't remember the next day, what they decided to do the day before? So I decided to re-engage with a practice I've used from time to time of setting a consciousness trigger, where you try to associate some event to bring about some particular state of mind. What I picked was walking through a door. I decided that every time I walk through a door I'm going to come back to myself and touch the door frame. And stone me, 4 days in to making that decision I hadn't touched a single door frame. I had a great meditation this morning - doing a daily 40 minute practice alternating each day between Mindfulness of Breathing and Meta Bhavanna - and I was SO concentrated. Really focused. And god dammit, in the time it took me to get off my stool and walk out the door I forgot to touch the door frame! Off in a total day dream about work or what I was having for breakfast or something. What came to me standing in the kitchen is that ideally, once I've come back to myself, I'd stay there. And then I wouldn't have trouble remembering to touch the door frame. So I walked out the kitchen door in that state of mind and stayed with it through the garden and touched the frame of the shed door. Victory! Of course, now I need to avoid it becoming a mindless habit. Then I'll have to start remembering to NOT touch the door frame.  |
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Post by Peter on Apr 7, 2020 5:56:36 GMT -5
Finally got around to watching the soldier's interview, that was some strong stuff. Sorry, missed this at the time and can't find it by searching for the word 'soldier'. Could someone post a link plz? Ta! |
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Post by Peter on Apr 2, 2020 11:14:49 GMT -5
If I'd make an attempt to explain my perspective in detail on this forum, I wouldn't know where to start. And it would be off topic anyway. Definitely the wrong forum for this kind of discussion. But I'll see if I can send you a PM with a list of links that you can research by yourself. Yes please, just one or two would be enough and I can springboard from there. Ta! |
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Post by Peter on Mar 31, 2020 9:12:47 GMT -5
Why do you think that there would be a climate change? Any reason? I can sense it somehow, but what's the logic behind it? Oh I'm not saying climate change would be reversed in the first instance, just that massively reducing the amount of carbon dioxide we pump into the air would help prevent it from continuing to get worse in the medium term. |
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Post by Peter on Mar 31, 2020 4:59:43 GMT -5
I can tell you though that this crisis may not actually be what it seems to be at the moment and that there are plans underway in the background for a life after the crisis, which may disappear as suddenly as it appeared on our radar. Are you speaking of plans at the level of government, or elsewhere Reefs ? What gives you evidence for those plans existing? In the UK (and this is filtered through the media of course) it very much seems like our government is working / reacting day to day and can't see more than a week ahead - with the exception of some hints coming from other countries further on than we are (looting in Italy now?). This is evidenced by a gradual filling in of the response - what about the self employed, what about construction workers etc; all questions being asked of our government and the response comes a couple of days later. I'm certainly enjoying the quietness. No planes in the sky, barely any cars on the road. If we could find a way to make this our way of life after this blows over then we could really address climate issues quickly. It would be radical action indeed. |
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Post by Peter on Mar 27, 2020 1:10:43 GMT -5
It did Sharon yes thanks. I guess just because we're being told we're plucky Brits all pulling together in the face of adversity By Golly doesn't mean that we can't also be such.  |
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Post by Peter on Mar 26, 2020 1:53:02 GMT -5
Funny though, how billions are being made to become still. The whole energy is peaceful where I'm at. The people that I see are appropriate and exhibit no fear. Hmm, there's fear where I am in the UK. You see it in hunched shoulders of people shuffling round the shops, giving worried looks to the empty aisles. They seem to think that keeping your distance from someone means you can't look or smile at them. They've obviously not been on any silent retreats! It's like there's a deliberate tapping into a national memory of WWII - we're being told we're plucky Brits pulling together to "get through it". Even the public announcements with sound bites of Boris Johnson are put through some filter to make them echoey, crackly low quality like they're a radio broadcast from 75 years ago. At least the weather is good. |
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Post by Peter on Mar 25, 2020 5:49:39 GMT -5
Hey all, I know many of them here from US. I read this message in my whatsapp today. What do you guys think about that? Well since you're asking Gopal, I think it's very unsubtle Republican propaganda. Really, Nancy Pelosi would endanger the lives of American citizens and cause the US economy to go into freefall just to get rid of Trump? Wow, someone really hates her. What do YOU think about it Gopal? You obviously didn't think of this as right wing propaganda, otherwise you wouldn't have continued the spread of this xenophobic fear mongering. Additionally (and I feel bad that my first post on this site in months has a negative vibe, but that's just where I am today) your use of "What do you guys think about that" is a classic Internet Arguing Technique. See #7 'The Innocent Question' here: www.cracked.com/funny-3809-internet-argument-techniques/ |
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Post by Peter on Nov 15, 2019 11:19:18 GMT -5
How would separating water into oxygen and hydrogen solve the problem? Doesn't the combustion of hydrogen create CO2? I suspect that Laughter's hope for fusion has more potential. Right, it's a zero sum game just like growing trees and burning wood for heat. It - at least - doesn't make the problem any worse. All this talk about going carbon neutral by the year X doesn't deal with the excess CO2 that's currently in the atmosphere and that will be added between now and whenever we stop adding it. I'm keen to see more carbon negative projects. I read about sucking carbon out of the air and using it to manufacture vodka. Here, take my money. But I'd love to see it used to create carbon fibre we could use for building houses, cars, space elevators. That would really start sinking some tonnage. I'm also keen to see fusion power go mainstream, but again it just doesn't make the problem any worse. Or it might do actually, because whatever that power gets used for, it's eventually converted to heat. Also, hello! I've so little to say these days but I am still reading. Exploring a deeper sense of connection with the universe. And by deeper I mean it's stretching all the way down to my tummy  |
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Post by Peter on Jul 2, 2019 3:26:35 GMT -5
Thanks Eric. Like the beard.
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Post by Peter on Feb 22, 2019 4:33:38 GMT -5
The truth that we're talking about is that the objects are in God rather than God being in the objects, and I've already told you. I don't like stories that are told to satisfy the mind. Better to stay with the mystery and keep the mind in a state of openness. Describe to me how it could be possible the objects are in God You might find it helpful to explore the concepts of Pantheism and PanentheismOh, this might be especially relevant to you: |
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Post by Peter on Sept 17, 2018 4:26:16 GMT -5
Your ability to teach is really shining through in that posting LightMystic - very clear communication. I'd Exalt you a Karma point if you didn't already have twice as many as I do I'm going to take a different line though, and I hesitated to post this because it's just my opinion on it. I hope having another point of view is helpful rather than confusing. As I see it, the "I AM" is that feeling of presence, of self-awareness which is more real, more 'here' than ordinary waking consciousness. It's that quality of awareness that can suddenly spring up on you when you're not particularly concentrating on getting something done. If you're in the middle of an argument, it's that quality that allows you to work creatively, instead of reacting automatically. So in that respect, spritual practice has tangible and immediate benefits in the 'real' world regardless of any 'attainment'. It's a feeling of being connected to a higher 'Me', and to the Universe and Not Universe. It's pointed to by playing The Game www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=I+lost+the+game It's like wakening up when you're already awake and the first thing you do is remember how long ago it was that you were last awake and - if it's been a couple of days - despair about how little spiritual progress you're making. So I have to disagree with LightMystic when he says that everything takes place within Awareness. Perhaps it does for him, but for me things seem to take place regardless of my level of awareness. I wouldn't claim to be 'Aware' unless I was in that feeling of 'present', of actually being where I am, rather than some sort of semi-distracted barely listening state that I seem to spend most of my weekends in. I had a little too much of it one time I was on a week long silent meditation retreat - it all got a little too immediate, a little too 'raw'. As LM says, you need to become comfortable with that relationship to Awareness. I'd also have to disagree with Fear. I agree with him that 'I AM' is about 'Being'. Being Present (I AM) does not require any 'thinking' but it does require a modicum of effort to avoid being swept away (into the past or the future) by a train of thought - at least that's true of where I am now. So as I see it, it is a method, and a possible one at that. The brief thought 'i am' can be used to bring you back to the present when you eventually manage to get off that train (and I'm not sure that we actually have much choice in when the train lets us go, which is why it's better not to get on board in the first place!). So I also disagree with Morrie about 'pre' consciousness. As I see it, 'I AM' is a quality that exists over and above ordinary waking consciousness - 'Post' conscious perhaps Cheers, Peter sdp likes. ...... Thanks for digging this up SDP, really interesting to see what I was writing a decade ago. Disagreeing with everyone on the forum apparently! I think it answers my question (if I have one) of why I have so little to say these days - I've already said it, and I'm not a fan of repetition. Cheers, Peter |
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Post by Peter on Jun 5, 2018 6:17:17 GMT -5
Reminds me of a funny story by Tolstoy, The Three Hermits. Ah, I'd heard that one in a Buddhist context where the Abbot of the monastery rows out to visit a hermit and tells him that he's pronouncing "om mani padme hum" incorrectly. On his way back the hermit runs over the water to his boat and asks "How does it go again?" |
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Post by Peter on Nov 17, 2017 4:37:39 GMT -5
You are welcome, Pete! It's been a long time seeing you round here. I kinda miss your bended spoon. 😀 Oh I'm here, I just don't often have anything to say. I've also been tipping the wrong side of the work life balance scales....can no longer afford to spend half the morning trawling back through posts to work out what "he said she said". Not that that's been needed recently. I do think that Reef's appointment as moderator has resulted in a big improvement in the quality of discussion - thanks Reefs, good job! |
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