Reverse Of Roles

[marleylinguistics]

i hope that no one can take offense to this and that everyone can accept my question objectively.

that being said, i partake in marijuana regularly, and ive had somewhat of well, just an idea...

is that no matter what situatiion i am in, it seems that my personality is always opposite of that when i am sober, and i also notice it in my friends. i would just like to know if this effect has ever been experienced by anyone else.

[Taeguk]

Hi, marleylinguistics! :)

You wrote:

i hope that no one can take offense to this and that everyone can accept my question objectively.

that being said, i partake in marijuana regularly, and ive had somewhat of well, just an idea...

is that no matter what situatiion i am in, it seems that my personality is always opposite of that when i am sober, and i also notice it in my friends. i would just like to know if this effect has ever been experienced by anyone else.

Well, I don't use marijuana myself (although I don't have a problem with people who do :) ), but from what I've heard this is a relatively common occurance with all kinds of intoxicants!

Hence the old saying that "wine loosens tongues". I'm not surprised to hear it's the same with ganja!

If you don't my asking, marleylinguistics, do you feel as if your "high" personality is your real personality? Or is your personality when you're sober a better indication of who you really are? Or are they both simply different sides of you?

[Zoid]

Which begs the question (if you don't mind me interjecting before yours has been answered, Taeguk! ;) )...

Are our "online personas" our "real" personas or just another aspect of such?

[Thomas Knierim]

I should probably not mention it, but the truth needs to get out. I am taking this substance every day, and it has been going on for quite a few years now. Few people know about it, only my family and my closest friends. It all started years ago when a friend invited me to try it out. I tried it once, twice, thrice, more and more often, until I finally got hooked. They grow it in remote mountain areas here in Asia. It's sold either loose or packed into neat tiny paper bags. You probably know what I am talking about. It's the dark and crumbly stuff with the aromatic smell. I am talking about Jasmine Green Tea, of course. There's nothing better than a hot cup of tea in the morning to wake up the sleeping spirits. In the afternoon, I switch to the "harder stuff", which could be an Orange Pekoe blend, Earl Grey, or a pure Chinese Olong.

Can't seem to kick the habit. Should I consider counselling?

Cheers, Thomas

[Starry_Canopy]

Marley

I had once been an addict of it purely to see the world in which 'the addict' lived, a friend of mine. I did this for about six months, consuming it morning, noon and night, 24 hours, topping up whenever the high seemed to be coming down.

My experience was that it suppressed physical and mental pain, sort of numbed me, but took away the control over how far to let a thought go. The latter part led to my doing everything rather slowly and often prefering sloth to activity.

The change in personality that I experienced seemed to be a direct effect of the increased unwillingness to stress myself... making me more peacable, non-offensive and prone to enjoying all the good experiences to the hilt while ignoring all the pin-pricks.

This 'selective' living, however led to my memory getting unreliable, my getting 'out of synch' with the non-marijuana people and events and, physically, to nervous weakness such as trembling of hands. That's when I decided enough was enough and that the cost of further 'learning' was going to be more than I was willing to pay and I stopped having it. I heard that my friend has also stopped having it.

[Starry_Canopy]

Thomas

I too have experienced this enlivening/ awakening kind of high acompanied by lovely, kind of intoxicating, positive felings given by tea! :)

In my case, it was fresh and unadulterated Darjeeling leaf tea, the best being from buds collected in early spring.

[Zoid]

Tea... :mellow:

[sahyo]

thomas :lol:

[sahyo]

People go on avoiding themselves. What do they know of misery? How can they think of the misery of the whole existence? First, you have to begin with yourself. If you are feeling miserable, let it become a meditation. Sit silently, close the doors. First feel the misery with as much intensity as possible. Feel the hurt. Somebody has insulted you. Now, the best way to avoid the hurt is to go and insult him, so that you become occupied with him. That is not meditation.

If somebody has insulted you, feel thankful to him that he has given you an opportunity to feel a deep wound. He has opened a wound in you. The wound may be created by many many insults that you have suffered in your whole life; he may not be the cause of all the suffering, but he has triggered a process.

Just close your room, sit silently, with no anger for the person but with total awareness of the feeling that is arising in you -- the hurt feeling that you have been rejected, that you have been insulted. And then you will be surprised that not only is this man there: all the men and all the women and all the people that have ever insulted you will start moving in your memory.

You will start not only remembering them, you will start reliving them. You will be going into a kind of primal. Feel the hurt, feel the pain, don't avoid it. That's why in many therapies the patient is told not to take any drugs before the therapy begins, for the simple reason that drugs are a way to escape from your inner misery. They don't allow you to see your wounds, they repress them. They don't allow you to go into your suffering and unless you go into your suffering, you cannot be released from the imprisonment of it.

It is perfectly scientific to drop all drugs before going into a group -- if possible even drugs like coffee, tea, smoking, because these are all ways to escape.

Have you watched? Whenever you feel nervous you immediately start smoking. It is a way to avoid nervousness; you become occupied with smoking. Really it is a regression. Smoking makes you again feel like a child -- unworried, nonresponsible -- because smoking is nothing but a symbolic breast. The hot smoke going in simply takes you back to the days when you were feeding on the mother's breast and the warm milk was going in; the nipple has now become the cigarette. The cigarette is a symbolic nipple.

Through regression you avoid the responsibilities and the pains of being adult. And that's what goes on through many many drugs. Modern man is drugged as never before, because modern man is living in great suffering. Without drugs it will be impossible to live in so much suffering. Those drugs create a barrier; they keep you drugged, they don't allow you enough sensitivity to know your pain.


Osho

[spiritual_emergency]

sahyo: ... they don't allow you enough sensitivity to know your pain.



http://thefifthbody.homestead.com/clancy_RedBones.jpg



Giving the Tear

As the fisherman sleeps, a tear is released from the corner of his eye. Skeleton Woman spies it, is filled with thirst, and awkwardly crawls to him to drink from the cup of his eye. What, we ask, could he be dreaming that would cause such a tear to come forth?

When one has ventured this far into relationship with the Life/Death/Life nature, the tear that is cried is the tear of passion and compassion mixed together, for oneself, and for the other. It is the hardest tear to cry and especially for men and certain kinds of "street-tough" women.

This tear of passion and compassion is most often wept after the accidental finding of treasure, after the fearful chase, after the untangling - for it is the combination of these that causes the exhaustion, the disassembling of defenses, the facing of oneself, the stripping down to the bones, the desire for both knowledge and relief. These cause a soul to peer into what the soul truly wants and to weep for loss and love of both.

As surely as Skeleton Woman was brought to the surface, now this tear, this feeling in the man, is also brought to the surface. It is an instruction in loving both self and another. Stripped now of all the bristles and hooks and shivs of the daytime world, the man draws Skeleton Woman to lie beside him, to drink and be nourished by his deepest feeling. In his new form he is able to feed the thirsty other.

This is the man healing, the man growing in understanding. He takes on his own medicine-making, he takes on the task of feeding the "deleted other." Through his tears, he begins to create.

To love another is not enough, to be "not an impediment" in the life of the other is not enough. It is not enough to be "supportive" and "there for them" and all the rest. The goal is to be knowledgeable about the ways of life and death, in one's own life and in panorama. And the only way to be a knowing man is to go to school in the bones of Skeleton Woman. She is waiting for the signal of deep feeling, the one tear that says, "I admit the wound."


Clarissa Pinkola Estes


See also: Skeleton Woman: A Tale of the Inuit (http://spiritualemergency.blogspot.com/2006/01/skeleton-woman-lifedeathlife-nature.html)

[Michael]

Thank you, SE. Very insightful, powerful, healing.

[spiritual_emergency]

AlphaAurigae: Very insightful, powerful, healing.

Those were my first impressions too. A few years after first reading that story I came across a song that pairs with it beautifully and since then, I can't think of one without the other. Feel free to give it a go -- I'm sure you'll agree that it fits well: Lay Me Down (http://manningmusic.homestead.com/lay_me_down.html)

[Winfried]

is that no matter what situatiion i am in, it seems that my personality is always opposite of that when i am sober, and i also notice it in my friends. i would just like to know if this effect has ever been experienced by anyone else.
I 'did' marijuana quite frequently the past year or so, but I never have seen this effect. I've heard of it, it scared me a bit, but I never noticed it. In fact, The green plant had no real effect on me. A bit drowziness, slighty altered perception (very slightly) is all I got from it. Which is the main reason I quit. I saw what it does to one's lungs, and I didn't think it was worth it.

But still, the little experimental scientist in me is shouting for at least one experience involving LSD, mescalin (don't read the doors of perception; it's bad influence), or psilocybin. The bad thing is, this being the Netherlands means I wouldn't have to go through too much trouble to get my hands on those substances. :lol:

[Noway2Zero]

well winfried

if you are going to ..

potentcy and longevity goes in this order..

psilocybin
LSD
mescalin

of course it all depends on grade of product ..but if you just have to try one, i would say psilocybin as the peak is short in case you are unable to cope with having what you know as reality fall away from you :)

[bito]

The final paragraphs from "Doors of Perception":

Visionary experience is not the same as mystical experience. Mystical experience is beyond the realm of opposites. Visonary experience is still within that realm. Heaven entails hell, and 'going to heaven' is no more liberation than is the descent into horror. Heaven is merely a vantage point from which the divine Ground can be more clearly seen than on the level of ordinary individuated existence.

If consciousness survives bodily death, it survives, presumably, on every mental level - on the level of mystical experience, on the level of blissful visionary experience, on the level of infernal visionary experience, and on the level of everyday individual experience.

In life, even the blissful visionary experience tends to change its sign if it persists too long. Many schizophrenics have their times of heavenly happiness; but the fact that (unlike the mescalin taker) they do not know when, if ever, they will be permitted to return to the reassuring banaity of everyday experience causes even heaven to seem appalling. But for those who, for whatever reason, are appalled, heaven turns into hell, bliss into horror, the Clear Light into the hateful glare of the land of lit-upness.

Of those who die, an infinitesimal minority are capable of immediate union with the divine Ground, a few are capable of supporting the visionary bliss of heaven, a few find themselves in the visionary horrors of hell and are unable to escape; the great majority end up in the kind of world described by Swedenborg and the mediums. From this world it is doubltess possible to pass, when the necessary conditons have been fulfilled, to worlds of visionary bliss or the final enlightenment.

My own guess is that modern spiritualism and ancient tradition are both correct. There is a posthumous state of the kind described in Sir Oliver Lodge's book, Raymond; but there is also a heaven of blissful visionary experience; there is also a hell of the same kind of appalling visionary experience as is suffered here by schizophrenics and some of those who take mescalin and there is also an experience, beyond time, of union with the divine Ground.

My read on Huxley is that drugs can induce consciousness (visionary) experience, the subtle experience of separation, but they cannot bring about what he calls union with the divine Ground, where there is no separation - the end of experiencing.

This happens only with conscious intent and attention. Ergo, spiritual paths and traditons.

:)

[bito]

The Ground Luminosity

The self-originated Clear Light, which from the very beginning was never born,
Is the child of Rigpa, which is itself without any parents - how amazing!
This self-originated wisdom has not been created by anyone - how amazing!
It has never experienced bith and has nothing in it that could cause it to die - how amazing!
Although it is evidently visible, yet there is no one there who sees it - how amazing!
Although it has wandered through samsara, no harm has come to it - how amazing!
Althought it exists in everyone everywhere, it has gone unrecognized - how amazing!
And yet you go on hoping to attain some other fruit than this elsewhere - how amazing!
Even though it is the thing that is most essentially yours, you seek for it elsewhere - how amazing!

The Four Phases of Dharmata (the intrinsic nature of everything, the essence of things are they are) OR The Spontaneous Presentation of the Nature of Our Mind Or Let There Be Light

1. Luminosity - the Landscape of Light

In the bardo of dharmata, you take on a body of light. The first phase of this bardo is when "space dissolves into luminosity". Suddenly you become aware of a flowing vibrant world of sound, light, and colour. All the ordinary features of our familar environment have melted into an all-pervasive landscape of light. This is brilliantly clear and radiant, transparent and multicoloured, unlimited by any kind of dimension or direction, shimmering and constantly in motion. Its colours are the natural expression of the intrinsic elemental qualities of the mind: space is perceived as blue light, water as white, earth as yellow, fire as red and wind as green.

How stable these dazzling appearances of light are in the bardo of dharmata depends entirely upon what stability you have managed to attain in Togal (spiritual) practice. Only a real mastery of this practice will enable you to stablize the experience and so use it to gain liberation. Otherwise, the bardo of dhamata will simply flash by like a bolt of lightning; you will not even know that it has occurred.

2. Union - the Deities

If you are unable to recognize this as the spontaneous play of Rigpa, the simple rays and colours then begin to integrate and coalesce into points of balls of light of different sizes, called tikle. Within them, the "mandalas of the peaceful and wrathful deities" appear, as enormous spherical concentrations of light seeming to occupy the whole of space.

This is the second phase, known as "luminosity dissolving into union," where the luminosoty manifests in the form of buddhas or deities of various size, colour, and form, holding different attributes. The brilliant light they emanate is blinding and dazzling, the sound is tremendous, like the roaring of a thousand thunderclaps, and the rays and beams of light are like lasers, piercing everything. They unfold, taking on their own characteristic mandala pattern of five-fold clusters. This is a vision that fills the whole of your perception with such intensity that if you are unable to recognize it for what it is, it appears terrifying and threatening. From yourself and from the deities, very fine shafts of light stream out, joining your heart with theirs. Countless luminous spheres appear in their rays, which increase and the "roll up," as the deities dissolve into you.

3. Wisdom

If again you fail to recognize and gain stability, the next phase unfolds, called "union dissolving into wisdom."

Another shaft of light springs out from your heart and an enormous vision unfolds from it; however, every detail remains distinct and precise. This is the display of the various aspects of wisdom, which appear together in a show of unfurled carpets of light and resplendent spherical luminous tikles.

First, on a carpet of deep blue light appear shimmering tikles of sapphire blue, in patterns of five. Above that, on a carpet of white light, appear radiant tikles, white like crystal. Above, on a carpet of yellow light, appear golden tikles, and upon that a carpet of red light supports ruby red tikles. They are crowned by a radiant sphere like an outspread canopy made of peacock feathers.

This brilliant display of light is the manifestation of the five wisdoms: wisdom of all-encompassing space, mirror-like wisdom, equalizing wisdom, wisdom of discernment and all-accomplishing wisdom. But since the all-accomplishing wisdom is only perfected at the time of enlightenment, it does not appear yet. Therefore, there is no green carpet of light and tikcles, yet it is inherent within all the other colours. What is being manifested here is our potential of enlightenment, and the all-accomplishing wisdom will appear when we become a buddha.

If you do not attain liberation here through resting undistracted in the nature of mind, the carpets of light and their tikles, along with your Rigpa, all dissolve into the radiant sphere of light, which is like a canopy of peacock feathers.

4. Spontaneous Presence

This heralds the final phase of the bardo of dharmata, "wisdom dissolving into spontaneous presence." Now the whole of reality presents itself in one tremendous display. First the state of primordial purity dawns like an open, cloudless sky. Then the peaceful and wrathful deities appear, followed by the pure realms of the buddhas, and below them the six realms of samsaric existence.

The limitlessness of this vision is utterly beyond our ordinary imagination. Every possibility is presented from wisdom and liberation, to confusion and rebirth. At this point you will find yourself endowed with powers of clairvoyent perception and recollection. The entire vision then dissolves back into its orignal essence, like a tent collapsing once its ropes are cut.

Understanding Dharmata

Now when the bardo of dharmata dawns upon me,
I will abandon all fear and terror,
I will recognize whatever appears as the display of my own Rigpa,
And know it to be the natural appearance of this bardo;
Now that I have reached this crucial point,
I will not fear the peaceful and wrathrul deities, that arise from the nature of my very own mind.

* The Tibetian Book of the Dead, Sogyal Rinpoche

No drugs!

:)

[schrodinger]

Yes, it is amazing! I have my own reasons for believing it is also accurate in describing the four phases. But the outcome of the fourth phase leaves me confused and somewhat disappointed, rather than enlightened. A person achieves all this clarity and even clairvoyance and finally is confronted by deities and/or demons that have their origins in his own mind? That seems like the ultimate letdown to me. So a Christian would surely be confronted by Christ on the cross, a Buddhist might see a sitting Buddha, and so on. Maybe someone like me would see both, plus a few other things as well. How can this be the moment of Truth, when what we see is still a function of our worldly experience? Where is the final liberation from all things worldly? Or does that come in an unwritten phase five? <_<

[Taeguk]

Hi!

schrodinger, you wrote:


A person achieves all this clarity and even clairvoyance and finally is confronted by deities and/or demons that have their origins in his own mind? So a Christian would surely be confronted by Christ on the cross, a Buddhist might see a sitting Buddha, and so on. Maybe someone like me would see both, plus a few other things as well. How can this be the moment of Truth, when what we see is still a function of our worldly experience? Where is the final liberation from all things worldly? Or does that come in an unwritten phase five?

Well, I'm hardly an expert on the Book of the Dead, schrodinger, but it seems like you might have forgotten the last part of Phase Four:

The limitlessness of this vision is utterly beyond our ordinary imagination. Every possibility is presented from wisdom and liberation, to confusion and rebirth. At this point you will find yourself endowed with powers of clairvoyent perception and recollection. [b] The entire vision then dissolves back into its orignal essence, like a tent collapsing once its ropes are cut.

Specifically, that last part, about "dissolving back into its original essence"! Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it sounds like some kind of ending or finality to me! :)

[spiritual_emergency]

A little something I came across in my wanderings the other day. The following is based on the work of Stanislav Grof -- an early pioneer in LSD research and transpersonal psychology.



Psychosis, caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain due to mental illness or drug ingestion, is much like undergoing an inner death. Some experts literally call it ego death, an inner catastrophe of enormous dimensions. Researchers of persons experiencing hallucinations due to drug use describe psychotic reactions to LSD, such as:

“an abysmal sense of physical destruction, emotional catastrophe, intellectual defeat, cultural/moral failure, and absolute damnation of transcendental proportions.” Subjects face agony and develop a conviction that they will explode and the entire world will be destroyed . . . in this situation it is extremely important that the sitters (individual guides) repeatedly emphasize the safety of this experience” (Grof, 158)

The experience of ego death is “the destruction of everything the subject is, possesses, or is attached to.” There is an “expectation of a catastrophe of enormous dimensions,” horrific panic, a fear of disintegration or, more violently, implosion. The patient feels the fate of the entire world depends on their ability to “hold on” (or conversely, to commit suicide).

Source: Getting Through Psychosis (http://www.mentalhealthworld.org/47AP.htm)



Bear in mind that "psychosis and/or schizophrenia" is what the ego death experience is called in this culture.

schrodinger: How can this be the moment of Truth, when what we see is still a function of our worldly experience?

Perhaps the moment of truth lies in seeing the projection for what it is -- a projection. The next logical question then becomes, what's left when you remove the projections?


See also:
Gallagher's Song (http://thefifthbody.homestead.com/Gallaghers_Song.html)
Death & Rebirth in Psychospiritual Transformation (http://home.swipnet.se/reality_center/spiremergenceinfo2.html#deathrebirth)
How to Treat Difficult Psychedelic Experiences (http://www.maps.org/ritesofpassage/anonther.html)
Guidelines for Making it Through a Spiritual Emergency (http://spiritualemergency.blogspot.com/2006/01/guidelines-for-making-it-through_10.html)
The Therapeutic Psychology of the Tibetan Book of the Dead (http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/robert.htm)

[spiritual_emergency]

From the link above...



The Therapeutic Psychology of the Tibetan Book of the Dead

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is pragmatically and existentially directed toward the "dead" who are still living, and not especially toward those who are clinically dead. To reveal this less obvious meaning, we need to examine more closely some of the key features of the manifest meaning, for these indicate that both the existence of gods and the existence of an after-death bardo realm are questionable. With respect to the reality of the gods and demons that are experienced in the after-death state, we have noted that the text informs the disembodied consciousness that these deities have no substantial reality of their own. Indeed, this is the central illuminating principle of the text. Two memorable excerpts are as follows:

Through the instruction of his guru he will recognize them [the visionary deities] as his own projections, the play of the mind, and he will be liberated. It is just like seeing a stuffed lion, for instance: he feels very frightened if he does not know that it is really only a stuffed lion, but if someone shows him what it is he is astonished and no longer afraid. So here too he feels terrified and bewildered when the blood-drinking deities appear with their huge bodies and thick limbs, filling the whole of space, but as soon as he is shown he recognises them as his own projections or as yidams; the luminosity that arises later, mother and son, merge together, and, like meeting a man he used to know very well, the self-liberating luminosity of his own mind spontaneously arises before him.

[W]hatever you see, however terrifying it is, recognise it as your own projection; recognise it as the luminosity, the natural radiance of your own mind.

These excerpts confirm that the gods and demons experienced in the after-death state, although they appear with a reality equal to the material objects in the world of the living, are indeed believed to be nothing more than manifestations of the dead person's own psychological states.(6) They are merely symbolic forms that express conditions of either psychological liberation or psychological bondage and suffering. This suggests that the path to enlightenment in no way depends upon favors or obstructions issued from the realm of the gods and demons that populate the after-death state; the path depends upon initially recognizing the images of the gods as manifestations of oneself in various possible and actual forms. Self-recognition alone initiates the path to more satisfactory levels of consciousness.

Source: The Therapeutic Psychology of the Tibetan Book of the Dead (http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/robert.htm)




These issues tend to arise naturally in life, especially during transitions and intense events, but they also are brought forth intensely due to the inner work. They arise especially as the soul learns to penetrate and transcend her ego structure. To follow our example, when the soul begins to see the limitation of structure and experiences herself as presence, the structure begins to reveal its nature as a mental construct characterized by past conditioning, ideas, memories, etc. The soul begins to experience an inner emptiness, a meaninglessness, a dread of falling apart, and terror of death and annihilation. These experiences of falling apart or being annihilated actually come to pass as the structures dissolve. The soul experiences disintegration and dissolution, disorientation, and a loss of identity; she feels lost and despondent. These existential crises are actually elements of some stages of working through ego structures that then lead to deeper realizations of true nature, moving to timelessness and formlessness. (The Inner Journey Home, p 231)

Source: Ego Death (http://www.ahalmaas.com/glossary/e/ego_death.htm)





Episodes Of Unitive Consciousness

[list]" ...An individual having a peak experience feels a sense of overcoming the usual divisions and fragmentations of the body and mind and reaching a state of complete inner unity and wholeness; this usually feels very healing and beneficial. One also transcends the ordinary distinction between subject and object and experiences a state of ecstatic union with humanity, nature, the cosmos, and God. This is associated with strong feelings of joy, bliss, serenity, and peace."

...The experience of numinosity has nothing to do with previous religious beliefs or programs; it is a direct and immediate awareness that we are dealing with something that has a divine nature and is radically different from our ordinary perception of the everyday world."...During mystical experiences, one can feel that one has access to ultimate knowledge and wisdom in matters of cosmic relevance.

Extracts from: The Stormy Search for the Self by C. and S. Grof


"...Such a state of exalted joy may last for varying periods, but it is bound to cease. The inflow of light and love is rhythmical, as is everything in the universe. After a while it diminishes or ceases, and the flood is followed by the ebb. The personality was infused and transformed, but this transformation is seldom either permanent or complete. More often a large portion of the personality elements involved revert to their earlier state."

...Most spiritual experiences contain a combination in various proportions of permanent changes, temporary changes, the recognition of obstacles that need to be overcome, and the lived realization of what it is like to exist at this higher level of integration."

<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>Extracts from an article by Roberto Assagioli in Spiritual Emergency, C. and S. Grof (ed.)

Source: Brow of Calm (http://browofcalm.blogspot.com/2007/01/episodes-of-unitive-consciousness.html)</span>

[spiritual_emergency]

On the question of should you or should you not take drugs...

Common sense dictates that you should not. In spite of that, thousands of people have. Some of them have had very powerful and profound experiences that produced lasting change in their life, some of them got nothing out of the experience (except the trip), and some of them did not fare so well. There are risks, ranging from incarceration to physical death.

Do be aware that there are alternate methods of exploring transpersonal states of consciousness, including but not limited to: drumming, chanting, meditation, love-making, and holotropic breathwork to name but a few.

Note that whatever experience may be produced, no matter how momentarily blissful or shattering it is, it's only a moment. A flash is just that -- a flash, a taste, a glimpse. Visiting Italy is not the same thing as Being Italy.

If the first challenge is to have the experience; the second is to actually make it through the experience. The third challenge is then to bring what you learned back down into the body and your daily life. I've noted before that I don't believe it's possible to be fully "enlightened" while still in a physical body and plenty of gurus, teachers, shamans, etc. before me have consistently demonstrated that in spite of their spiritual experiences, they are first and foremost, human. It's an important point that is often overlooked.


See also:
Chemical Enlightenment? (http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060930/bob8.asp)
Can Drugs Contribute to Enlightenment? (http://www.numenware.com/article/531/)
Holotropic Breathwork (http://www.breathwork.com/)

[schrodinger]

Perhaps the moment of truth lies in seeing the projection for what it is -- a projection. The next logical question then becomes, what's left when you remove the projections?-SE-

Firstly, I’m glad you are back posting again, Spiritual. As usual, you are hitting on some deep ‘concepts’ for lack of a better word. Yes, that is what I meant when I asked if there is a ‘fifth phase’. I find it a big disappointment to get into fourth gear, so to speak, and what I see is just a projection based upon what I have been experiencing inside the ‘normal’ everyday projection. That is not my idea of coming face to face with the Truth. Maybe the projection is there to protect us? If it were removed and we could not survive the experience and live to talk about it, any written words about this, including the Tibetan Book of the Dead, can only go as far as phase four?

Do be aware that there are alternate methods of exploring transpersonal states of consciousness, including but not limited to: drumming, chanting, meditation, love-making, and holotropic breathwork to name but a few. –SE--

It is also possible to arrive there quite unexpected, without drugs or making any attempt to get there. I suspect that is another way to describe a psychosis, or a schizophrenic break or possibly what in the West passes for a ‘mid-life crisis’. Suddenly finding yourself having a transpersonal transcendental experience can be very terrifying when it arrives unexpectedly and no ‘guru’ along to explain what is happening! My thought is that someone raised in an Eastern culture, like India, is more aware of the existence of such a state and better equipped to benefit from the experience, than a Westerner. The Westerner is more likely to wind up needing psychotherapy or psychotropic drugs or possibly having a complete schizophrenic break, than his Eastern cousin.


If the first challenge is to have the experience; the second is to actually make it through the experience. The third challenge is then to bring what you learned back down into the body and your daily life. I've noted before that I don't believe it's possible to be fully "enlightened" while still in a physical body and plenty of gurus, teachers, shamans, etc. before me have consistently demonstrated that in spite of their spiritual experiences, they are first and foremost, human. It's an important point that is often overlooked.—SE—

I agree. This goes with what I said earlier about the projection being there to protect us. If the full Truth were to be revealed, the heart or brain or some other part of the physical body would stop working, die. As far as making it through the experience is concerned, I believe it is important that anyone near you must know enough to leave you alone and only intervene if actually asked to do so. I suspect many a good useful transcendental experience is interfered with by well intentioned bystanders trying to pull the person back into our everyday reality. I suspect I might become rather angry to have my ‘phase four’ suddenly come to an end because some idiot decided I needed CPR! :lol:

[spiritual_emergency]

schrodinger: Yes, that is what I meant when I asked if there is a ‘fifth phase’. I find it a big disappointment to get into fourth gear, so to speak, and what I see is just a projection based upon what I have been experiencing inside the ‘normal’ everyday projection. That is not my idea of coming face to face with the Truth. Maybe the projection is there to protect us? If it were removed and we could not survive the experience and live to talk about it, any written words about this, including the Tibetan Book of the Dead, can only go as far as phase four?

My own experience contained lots of peaks, valleys and high points but one that I've pondered on a great deal occurred roughly midway through that experience. I've touched on it before or rather, I've tried to express it in the Ego Death (http://www.thebigview.com/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=4&t=1103) thread.

In a nutshell... what happened is that there came a moment when I felt that "God" showed up -- I should clarify that I'm talking about a form of energy here, not a long-bearded fellow in a robe accompanied by a heavenly choir. Anyway, that energy showed up. Shortly thereafter there was a period of blackness during which "I (http://thefifthbody.homestead.com/awakening_by_the_gate_of_sorrow.html)" did not exist. I've referred to this darkness before as "the luminosity of the black goddess" and I associate it very much with Kali and the Black Madonna. I don't know how long I was "there" because time did not exist "there".

Anyway... you asked about projection. I tend to think of the matter as occurring on levels. What I have figured out (thus far) is that projection is maya. I'll give you an example -- right now I am relating to you. My impressions about who and what you are can impact that. For example, if I think you're a major jerk, that's going to get in the way of me "seeing" you for who and what you really are.

It reminds me of a zen story I read long ago where a teacher has his student sit down in front of a tree and meditate on the true nature of the tree. Each morning the teacher comes back and asks the student, "What do you see?" and each morning, the student has a lovely, lyrical answer for the teacher. Then the teacher would whap him with his stick and leave him alone for another day. This goes on for several weeks and finally one morning the teacher shows up, asks his question and the student says, "It's a tree. It's just a freakin' tree." And the teacher puts away his stick.

I suspect that at a certain level it's all projection -- for example, the world/universe is being "projected" out of that timeless blackness, but I think where the emphasis needs to be placed is not on the projection so much as seeing things for what they really are at that particular level. I suppose this belief fuels my perception that there is no point in attempting to live in a constant spiritual state as long as you're in a physical body. You have a body, it requires a certain degree of attention. If you don't have a body, the rules change.


It is also possible to arrive there quite unexpected, without drugs or making any attempt to get there. I suspect that is another way to describe a psychosis, or a schizophrenic break or possibly what in the West passes for a ‘mid-life crisis’. Suddenly finding yourself having a transpersonal transcendental experience can be very terrifying when it arrives unexpectedly and no ‘guru’ along to explain what is happening!

I think the key issue is that anything that severely challenges the ego can serve as a trigger. Naturally, when I say "ego" I'm referring to the structure of the self. Essentially, this structure is comprised of ideas and nothing more. Those ideas are the things we believe to be true about ourselves and the world we live in. In many cases, I think that what we call "psychosis" in this culture is, in truth, ego collapse. Any time this happens, regardless of the triggering event, it can be an opportunity for getting up close and personal with spiritual truths because the ego -- one's belief structure -- has been temporarily disabled. This allows that which has been there all along to be known.

To return to your earlier question regarding projection and protection, it's very difficult to do the things you need to do for yourself in this world once you've come up against some of these greater realities. Food? Mortgage payments? Paying for your kid's college education? These facets of the reality that need to be addressed in order to live on this particular plane of existence can cease to become the least bit important or meaningful. Try to imagine that for a moment. Everything you've believed in, every cause you've ever fought for, every dream you ever held -- ground up by Nothingness into Nothingness. Now try to imagine yourself getting out of bed the next day. People can hit a very difficult phase in the aftermath of such experiences. All their motivations, their purpose in living, in loving, in caring, in working, in being who they thought they were has been stripped away. This is the thick of the dark night and something to think about before you pencil in a "shamanistic trip with DMT" on your next free weekend. This is a process that can take many, many years -- it's not necessarily over and done with by the time Monday rolls around.

My thought is that someone raised in an Eastern culture, like India, is more aware of the existence of such a state and better equipped to benefit from the experience, than a Westerner. The Westerner is more likely to wind up needing psychotherapy or psychotropic drugs or possibly having a complete schizophrenic break, than his Eastern cousin.

As a general rule, I think that's probably true. However, the process can be a difficult one for anyone who is moving through it. As an example, read that opening quote on ego death in the ego death thread. Even people who have long been following a spiritual path can find the process to be overwhelming. I suspect that this is because it's supposed to be. Again, quoting Osho...


[list]And remember, there is going to be an interim period, an interval, when the ego will be shattered, when you will not know who you are, when you will not know where you are going, when all boundaries will melt.

You will simply be confused, a chaos.

Because of this chaos, you are afraid to lose the ego. But it has to be so. One has to pass through the chaos before one attains to the real center.

Source: The False Center (http://deoxy.org/egofalse.htm)



I'm also aware of accounts wherein an individual within a spiritual community will undergo that process and be ostracized, labelled "mentally ill" and dismissed from the community because of it. We live in a culture which really does prefer that any reference to "That Which is Divine" be cloaked in loveliness and light. There is a tendency to resist that which is not beautiful, that which is dark. There's a book out on that concept that I keep meaning to pick up, it's called, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers (http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/books/books.php?id=1594). As for me, I like the dark (http://spiritualemergency.blogspot.com/2006/01/in-beginning.html). I don't know if I'm "supposed" to be here, I only know it's where I am and therefore, that's what I must give my attention to. I also sense that I'm moving out of it but I don't know what comes next.

Overall, a guide can certainly be helpful -- inner guides are probably best (http://spiritualemergency.blogspot.com/2006/01/anima-animus.html), but exterior guides can be extraordinarily helpful too. All in all, just because one lives in a culture where such experiences are more easily accepted doesn't guarantee an easier time of it, although at least it will offer a certain degree of exposure -- that alone could be enough to spare you a trip to the psych ward.

Meantime, here's an interesting article that addresses some of those East/West issues. It seems to suggest that this process is not as straightforward as it might appear to be and also emphasizes that these experiences are best brought down into the body and our daily activities: Even the Best Meditators Have Old Wounds to Heal (http://easternhealingarts.com/Articles/woundstoheal.html).

[schrodinger]

I'll give you an example -- right now I am relating to you. My impressions about who and what you are can impact that. For example, if I think you're a major jerk, that's going to get in the way of me "seeing" you for who and what you really are. --SE--

Hmm, I wonder why you chose that particular example? <_< :lol:

To return to your earlier question regarding projection and protection, it's very difficult to do the things you need to do for yourself in this world once you've come up against some of these greater realities. Food? Mortgage payments? Paying for your kid's college education? These facets of the reality that need to be addressed in order to live on this particular plane of existence can cease to become the least bit important or meaningful. Try to imagine that for a moment. Everything you've believed in, every cause you've ever fought for, every dream you ever held -- ground up by Nothingness into Nothingness.—SE—

I think “very difficult” is an understatement. There are some occupations, (perhaps one that requires a security clearance) where such an experience with “greater reality” is simply not allowed! The irony is that just being in such an occupation, and visiting places such as Iraq, can trigger the experience in the first place. And then there is the example portrayed so well, in the movie “A Beautiful Mind” of the brilliant theoretical mathematician, which hit a bit close to home.

We live in a culture which really does prefer that any reference to "That Which is Divine" be cloaked in loveliness and light. There is a tendency to resist that which is not beautiful, that which is dark. There's a book out on that concept that I keep meaning to pick up, it's called, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers. As for me, I like the dark. I don't know if I'm "supposed" to be here, I only know it's where I am and therefore, that's what I must give my attention to. I also sense that I'm moving out of it but I don't know what comes next.—SE—

I suppose with all the darkness we see in our everyday experience, it is only natural to wish for everything to be beauty and light on the other side, and maybe it is. Maybe it just has to get darker and darker before finally passing into the light? But, once again, I don’t believe it is possible to get through to what I call the “central order of things” while still living in this realm, although we can be aware that it exists. We can run along the beach and every so often dart into the waves and pick up a remarkable shell to admire, but we can’t really experience the sea in the same way as a fish does unless we can become the fish. Does that make any sense?


And remember, there is going to be an interim period, an interval, when the ego will be shattered, when you will not know who you are, when you will not know where you are going, when all boundaries will melt.

You will simply be confused, a chaos.

Because of this chaos, you are afraid to lose the ego. But it has to be so. One has to pass through the chaos before one attains to the real center.

Source: The False Center

Do we know who, exactly writes this? You know, up until about 3 years ago, I would have said it is a bunch of crap! But not anymore, not since I have had my own version of an encounter with ego death. I am glad it happened here in Asia, where I could talk about it and some people (not all) really understood what I had gone through. I am not sure how things might have played out in the West, but I am sure it would have been much different and I am not at all sure I would be willing to discuss it at all. Oh well, now I have to take care of more earthly matters, the car needs washing! :ph34r:

[spiritual_emergency]

schrodinger: Hmm, I wonder why you chose that particular example?

lol! I suspect schrodinger, that it is not our differences that place us apart, but rather, our unacknowledged sameness.

I suppose with all the darkness we see in our everyday experience, it is only natural to wish for everything to be beauty and light on the other side, and maybe it is. Maybe it just has to get darker and darker before finally passing into the light? But, once again, I don’t believe it is possible to get through to what I call the “central order of things” while still living in this realm, although we can be aware that it exists. We can run along the beach and every so often dart into the waves and pick up a remarkable shell to admire, but we can’t really experience the sea in the same way as a fish does unless we can become the fish. Does that make any sense?

Yes. Meanwhile, I'd noted that I seem to moving out of that darkness -- although I suspect it will be with me forever and I prefer it that way. I think that maybe what I'm moving towards is that Life itself is a miracle. This is a song I've been hanging with and it has some answers for me, even if I haven't yet digested them: Innocent - Our Lady Peace (http://youtube.com/watch?v=y1v5L5oEPTI)


See also: Innocence (http://thefifthbody.homestead.com/innocence.html)

[sahyo]

Try to imagine that for a moment. Everything you've believed in, every cause you've ever fought for, every dream you ever held -- ground up by Nothingness into Nothingness.



Echo of the Cedars

High above what the wind sang, the cedars echoed,
what shone on the snow peaks,
what spilled over the evening sky,
Who received this?
the one who extended his hands in prayer?
No.
It just descended into my offered heart,
It poured into my welcome tears.
It came unknown, unrecognised.

By means of all these and me
It brought itself to itself,
it entered itself
Alone where it is resplendent,
eyes are helplessly lowered,
Not only voice,
even the resonance of silence ceases there.

[spiritual_emergency]

sahyo, those are tender words. I thank you for them.

[sahyo]

thanking s_e

[bito]

Mind builds an illusory bridge between illusory shores.

Love builds nothing.

[spiritual_emergency]

Re: Nothingness


Recognition of poverty as the fundamental condition of human existence grows out of an awareness of something more basic that Corbin calls mystical poverty: all things derive not from themselves, but from a source that is the grantor of Being to everything. Metaphysical poverty is the true state of all beings: each and every thing has nothing in itself, is nothing in itself. The 17th century Shi'ite mystic Mir Damad heard "the great occult clamor of beings," the "silent clamor of their metaphysical distress;" it appeared to him as a music of cosmic anguish and as a sudden black light invading the cosmos. This is a direct perception of what philosophers call the contingency of being. It is the experience that gives rise to the great question of metaphysics "Why is there something rather than nothing?" For the gnostic it takes the form of a shattering moment of annihilation and terror, undoing all the solid foundations upon which the ego and the literal world are built. In Corbin's words,
The black light reveals the very secret of being, which can only be as made-to-be; all beings have a twofold face, a face of light and a black face. The luminous face, the face of day, is the only one that…the common run of men perceive… Their black face, the one the mystic perceives, is their poverty… The totality of their being is their daylight face and their night face…

The wonder and terror in the face of the fact that there is, but only by the inexplicable grace of God, something rather than nothing, provide the opening to the Unknown that lies at the heart of all religion, and of all knowing. To cover over this terrible wonderment is to block access to an Absence that is not the empty Nothing of nihilism, but the unknown and unknowable source of everything: the necessarily Hidden God beyond all being.
We know from Corbin's work that there are two darknesses: the darkness of evil that refuses the Light of God, and the shattering Darkness of the Black Light at the approach to the Pole that annihilates all human knowledge and pretension and is the final dangerous trial of the mystical journey. Perhaps it is an intimation of this divine undoing of human arrogance that lies behind the post-modern desire to deconstruct the claims to positive knowledge that define our rationalist heritage. But this destructive frenzy too often remains trapped within the confines of human language and ends in nihilism, solipsism, apathy and resignation. This leaves the way open for the radical dogmatists, both technological and religious fundamentalists, who have no patience with abstract debates about democracy or relativism: they simply go about their business of changing the world.

We need to learn from Corbin that the antidote to both nihilism and the dogmatic fundamentalism that is always constellated with it must come from a kind of positive deconstruction of the self in the vision of the Deus absconditum, the divine Beyond Being which is the source, the Breath that grants being to all things. Corbin writes,<span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%'>Any metaphysical doctrine which attempts a total explanation of the universe, finds it necessary to make something out about nothing, or rather, to make everything out about nothing, since the initial principle from which the world derived, and which must explain it, must never be something contained in this world, and simultaneously it is necessary for this initial principle to posses all that is necessary to explain at once the being and the essence of the world and that which it contains… It is necessary…that this initial principle be at once 'all' and 'nothing'… [This] is a…nothing from which all things are derived. This is the Nothing of the Absolute Divine, superior to being and thought.
5 Henry Corbin (1981). My translation..

This Black Face of the majesty of Divinity is the essential counterweight to the Face of Light, the Face of Beauty of the revealed cosmos. You cannot have the one without the other. Majesty without Beauty is annihilation pure and simple. Beauty without Majesty would be an unthinkable Absolute frozen in eternal, changeless immanence - a permanent, horrible, all-pervading Final Truth. All of Creation is balanced between these poles, constantly created, and constantly undone in the divine interplay between transcendence and immanence.

The Absolute beyond-being is also, in the Abrahamic tradition, the Absolute Subject. The Giver of being can never be an object, a thing. In its infinite fecundity and mystery, its forever-receding depth and absolute Unity, it is the unifier, the guarantor of the individuality of every being. As such, it is the archetype of the Person, and of the interiority that infuses all the beings of the Earth experienced as an Angel.

It is the inexpressible Mystery of this primordial Darkness that it simultaneously establishes and shatters the human person. And it lies very close at hand. It is the still, small voice of the Hebrew Bible; and in the Qur'an, God says "I am closer to you than your jugular vein." Were we to learn this, to know that the presence of this absence is immediate, just beyond the face of the beauty of the world, we would need far less than we think we do. Our mode of being would be far less needy. We would know that scarcity and plenitude are complementary, not contradictory. We would understand the necessity of poverty as the prerequisite to the experience of the fullness of the world. For the things of this world grow opaque when we try to control and possess them, and they hide their connections among themselves, with us, and to the darknesses of the divine. They withdraw into themselves, lose substance and block our access to the riches at the roots of things. So our desperate neediness and grasping at the world and our fear of poverty and of the Dark close us off from ourselves and the worlds that we can inhabit.


Source: The Black Light (http://www.sophiajournal.org/archives2/cheetham.html)

See also: Universally Speaking (http://profile.imeem.com/4Xd2cC/music/Tl1rHtLv/universally_speaking/)

</span>

[sahyo]

no illusory "Mind builds an illusory bridge between illusory shores."

[sahyo]

bit :love:


;)

[bito]

here < ---------------------------------------------- > there



:lol:



:love:

[bito]

:)

[spiritual_emergency]

bito: here < ---------------------------------------------- > there

:lol:

I confess that I never seem to grasp what the laughter is supposed to be about, although I have encountered it before. Typically from those who are "further along" than me and seem to have figured out that it's all some kind of a joke. But I never seem to get the humor. I never seem able to figure out why "being one with everything" means "being one" with only the happy, pretty parts for some, while others get that as well as the not-so-happy and not-so-pretty.

Can you elaborate on your smiley face above bito? Perhaps you have some insights in that regard for me. Can you tell me how you can laugh while in every moment of every day other human beings are being tortured, raped, starved, beaten, etc. Is there some "trick" to sidestepping that pain that I simply don't know about? I'd like to get to that place you seem to be in but I keep getting stuck in that pain. Are those others not "real"? Are they all "illusions"? Is that the way out of pain and into the space of the eternal sunshine of the happy-faced smiley?

[spiritual_emergency]

The above is a wholly sincere question, by the way. It is a place I repeatedly get stuck in and have for the past few years. I'd really like to feel that I have it all figured out and everything in my life is beautiful and shiny now, but truth be known, I don't and it isn't.

[sahyo]

hehehe

:love:

bito

[Noway2Zero]

hmm..

its the 'doing something' in attempt to free yourself, that is the chains you wish to remove so any course of action wont be the right one until you realise this..

its not a joke at all..

reminding myself that somewhere right now someone is suffering isnt easing their suffering..

if i was in that postion (of suffering) id not want you to be suffering because i was..

love is the only tool to disperse hate so the more people that realise the truth the closer we are to ending all suffering.. this is the Way

mabey that helps? mabey not. :)

[sahyo]

s_e


laughing not cease though teared-story shayo(sherry)-friend(kunle)


story written for submitting to CNN and other tv news, so maybe some assistance kunle-brothers:



Hello.

I have been instant messaging and emailing with a friend, Adekunle (Kunle) in Africa, for three years.Two weeks ago his youngest brother, Emmanuel Shodolamu (Emma) sixteen, was kidnapped when staying with a family and babysitting, when he was mistaken for their oldest son which had died but the kidnappers didn't know was dead.

Babatunde Fatona, the father of the baby Emma was babysitting, in a scheme with some co-workers, had a deal to steal, $ 4.2 million naira from their employer. Babatunde was to steal the boss's checkbook for accessing the money. After stealing the money Babatunde kept it (don't know if he stole the amount the deal was for), refusing to split it with his co-workers. After Emma was kidnapped the Fatonas were told they would kill Joshua (the dead son's name) if Babatunde didn't give them their share.

Babatunde then disappeared with the money so kidnappers couldn't find him. His brother, who knows where he's hiding, was arrested when he wouldn't to tell police where he is. The Fatona family had a lawyer assist them for the release of his brother, but refused to help Kunle, who is very poor, when he asked them for help.

The police refuse to search for Emma unless Kunle pays them to send out a car.

The employer who was stolen from, who is rich, isn't interested in paying the ransom money for Emma.

I don't know why yet, but Kunle was mobbed, attacked physically and injured, by the Fatona family.

Since the boys mother died when Emma was very young (don't know exactly when), and seems no one has live with them for around nine years, Kunle has been a parent to his three younger brothers during which some of the time, particularly the last three years, there's been a lot of illness (he and Emma), and sometimes Seun (the second oldest). Many times they haven't had any food, often little food, and when money for it it hasn't been nutritious.

Through me (I receive disability checks, so very little money) family and friends (though none much extra money) have assisted them with medical expenses, medicine, rent, food, and schooling for Samson (Sam who is graduated now), and Emma. Lately though, they, except for our friend in Australia who sends what he can (which right now isn't enough for food for most of the month for four people), haven't had extra funds to assist them with, and so they're now homeless. Kunle said if they hadn't been homeless Emma would've been with them. His health is so fragile they sent him to stay with Fatonas, which they have been friends with for years, when they offered for him to stay there.

Kunle is distraught at the lack of police interest and caring for searching for Emma. They just tell him he needs to get a lawyer though he's told them he hasn't any money for one. He instant messaged the message below to our friend in Australia around a week after Emma was kidnapped.Though it may be difficult to read I didn't want to alter it:

kunle bolu: bro
kunle bolu: emma yet to be found
kunle bolu: case is now transfered to the state cid,panti,lagos
kunle bolu: it's the divisional headquarters of police
kunle bolu: the fatona family are not giving any information about their man(mr fatona) who ran away since emma got missing from them
kunle bolu: one of mr fatona's brother has been arrested....the family now got a lawyer....they want the police to release him....the lawyer is fighting for them....brother...we are helpless....the police in charge of the case advised us to get a lawyer...bro ...i can't higher a lawyer...i want emma back bro...i'll give my life....bro....i need help....i have called mr mark of the usa emmbassy fbi here....he couldn't intervene...we are helpless bro
kunle bolu: i'm dying
kunle bolu: i was also attacked by the fatonas family....when their brother got arrested by the police....they mobed me....they bit me all over....i was taken to the hospital....a lot of injections.....the police took the photogragh of my wounded body....i still have it all over
kunle bolu: bro.....we are perishing....but i'll keep fighting till i die to get emma.
kunle bolu: i'm like a broom stick now
kunle bolu: bro.....call p'ple tell p'ple help us get help....beg sherry for us....we need p'ple we need help....bro we dying....i'm all tears bro....this cafe manager is right here by me as i type....he helped with this ticket....i just came from the police station....we going tomorrow again...bro....help us tell the world....tell journalists...tell everyone who is kind....tell the world we need p'ple to help intervene....we dying in these p'ple hands
kunle bolu: broooo...i need u,i need the government here and there anyone to help us
kunle bolu: beg sherry for us...we need help


Kunle is very weak now from stress and lack of food. He has been begging managers of cyber cafes for tickets to keep in touch a few minutes once or a few times a week.

There is more to this story the extreme poverty and struggling they're living there, but I feel it would be best for someone to talk with Kunle for accuracy.


Thank you very much for reading, listening.

[sahyo]

yes laughing sayho can crying

[Noway2Zero]

sahyo.. you wrote this message to CNN?

[schrodinger]

I suspect schrodinger, that it is not our differences that place us apart, but rather, our unacknowledged sameness.—SE—

I suspected that for quite some time. Most of our exchanges have been in the political arena, where it is natural to focus on differences to the exclusion of everything else. In exploring this topic, it is evident that we have a lot in common, including the unease about the smilie faces. Although I do enjoy a laugh when the situation warrants it, I don’t think that Nero was necessarily more spiritually developed than his fellow Romans.

Meanwhile, I'd noted that I seem to moving out of that darkness -- although I suspect it will be with me forever and I prefer it that way.—SE—

I have no doubt at all that it is impossible, absolutely impossible to ever erase the experience from memory, and, same as you, I would not want it erased. It saddens me to think of people taking mind-numbing drugs, or electric shock in an attempt to snap them back to this reality, when they have seen that other reality! Both must exist together. In fact using the word ‘both’ is disingenuous of me. There are as many realities as we can imagine, and then some. And the realization of that fact should be a liberation, but it does come at a great price, the darkness. But even the deepest writings in the “Book of the Dead” cannot over shadow some basic common sense: “Nobody needs a smile so much as those who have none left to give”. :)

[sahyo]

yes wrote for CNN, N2Z

[spiritual_emergency]

Thanks for those words, Noway2zero. The place where I seem to get stuck is ... If we're all one and someone else is suffering, then how can I not be suffering? Really, the thought of breaking free of that connection is tempting because it hurts but I can't seem to break from that connection. Maybe that's just something I have to accept and that's where the point of resistance can rise up at times.

This passage is maybe one of the better ones I've found that touch on these points...



[list]Simplicity is the key, forget trying to get somewhere, just sit back, relax and see that you are the one consciousness which includes ALL pain and suffering, ALL humanity, ALL love, which are indeed inside in you. You do not move, you feel it on behalf of every being on the planet.

Source: The Search for a Selfish Enlightenment (http://www.antiguru.org/nuggets/p07enlightenment.php)



Meanwhile, as I'm typing this, sahyo's message has come up regarding his friend. What is unreal about that pain? What is illusory about that pain? It's tempting to want to escape it, to run from it. It's even tempting to go into silence, into spiritual practice as a means of escaping it. Yet it's still there. We have bodies and the rules are different "here" than they are "there". What is there to do but pass on a bit of kindness, knowing that in the larger scheme of things, it's a drop in the bucket.

[Noway2Zero]

not attempt to escape it.. if you wish to help people to be free you have to first free yourself otherwise you will only add to it..

here..

For I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come. -Jesus the Christ, Luke 22:18

[sahyo]

Meanwhile, as I'm typing this, sahyo's message has come up regarding his friend. What is unreal about that pain? What is illusory about that pain? It's tempting to want to escape it, to run from it. It's even tempting to go into silence, into spiritual practice as a means of escaping it. Yet it's still there. We have bodies and the rules are different "here" than they are "there". What is there to do but pass on a bit of kindness, knowing that in the larger scheme of things, it's a drop in the bucket.

sweeting s_e

kunle doesn't care any that stuff ...kunle-paining

[sahyo]

if you wish to help people to be free you have to first free yourself otherwise you will only add to it..

[sahyo]

Meanwhile, as I'm typing this, sahyo's message has come up regarding his friend. What is unreal about that pain? What is illusory about that pain? It's tempting to want to escape it, to run from it. It's even tempting to go into silence, into spiritual practice as a means of escaping it. Yet it's still there. We have bodies and the rules are different "here" than they are "there". What is there to do but pass on a bit of kindness, knowing that in the larger scheme of things, it's a drop in the bucket.



s_e

kunle-brothers don't need people analyzing

starving doesn't wait

[schrodinger]

What we have here is a very interesting development. On the one hand, we have one of TBV’s “charter” members, Sahyo who by virtue of longevity on this site, should be accorded some credibility. On the other hand, we have the fact that Nigeria is notorious throughout the world as the primary source of Internet related scams, very similar in context to the story posted by Sahyo. While I would like to give her the benefit of the doubt, I have seen too many such scams over the years and I am sorry to say that I feel this is just another one. I think this is a serious matter and Thomas should look into it, to see if Nigerian fraudsters are now abusing this forum. If that does turn out to be the case, I would expect that Sahyo would be banned from this place, permanently. On the other hand, if Thomas finds that the posting by Sahyo is legitimate, then I would expect him to ban me, for challenging the integrity of one of TBV’s “charter” members. Thomas, the ball is now in your court.

[sahyo]

On the other hand, we have the fact that Nigeria is notorious throughout the world as the primary source of Internet related scams, very similar in context to the story posted by Sahyo. While I would like to give her the benefit of the doubt, I have seen too many such scams over the years and I am sorry to say that I feel this is just another one. I think this is a serious matter and Thomas should look into it, to see if Nigerian fraudsters are now abusing this forum.



yes nigeria is noted for people scamming ,
but if you look up lists of sample scam letters, you'll see they aren't anything like this
...it's suspicion like this that leave people which need assistance without it

had just finished the story for submitting to CNN when read this thread
...the post was in keeping with the post responded to

when people want to ignore, they'll seek any excuse


:)

[spiritual_emergency]

I agree that I don't see the same similarities between sahyo's sharing of her letter and that of the typical Nigerian scam described at the snopes site, primarily because there is no request for funds of any type. Nonetheless, if you look around the net you'll find plenty of people sharing some very sad stories and asking for various donations -- some of those stories are sincere and others are nothing but a con. I wouldn't want to see anyone banned, schrodinger. You saw something you recognized as potentially harmful because you've seen similarities elsewhere and alerted others to it: Nigerian Scams (http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/nigeria.asp). Perhaps sahyo's intent was to inform and yours to protect -- neither strikes me as meriting banning. Where would the "community" benefit by silencing either voice and the knowledge you each have to share as based on your personal experience?


Noway2zero: not attempt to escape it.. if you wish to help people to be free you have to first free yourself otherwise you will only add to it.

I'm not certain I see the relevancy Noway2zero, although I appreciate the quote. That said, do you think that "Christ" is out there somewhere thinking to himself, "Whew, I'm sure glad I escaped all that pain and suffering -- I'll just hang out in blissland for the rest of eternity and not concern myself with anyone else because they are them and I am me and we are completely separate."?

When I am not doing what I'm presently doing at this moment, what I'm more often doing is talking to schizophrenics. I'm doing what I can to help them move through that process without being hospitalized, medicated (against their will), stigmatized, or silenced. It helps enormously to have been in the space they find themselves in because it can allow me to move into a state of empathic connection with them -- that connection right there is where healing can occur: "Compassion or the sense of shared humanity, of our kinship with each other, this is what heals." (http://spiritualrecoveries.blogspot.com/2007/01/pema-chdrn-tonglen.html)

If I waited to be "perfect" before doing what I do, I'd never have the pleasure of having known some very beautiful (and very wounded) human beings, some of whom I have helped and some of whom have helped me.

[bito]

Can you elaborate on your smiley face above bito? Perhaps you have some insights in that regard for me. Can you tell me how you can laugh while in every moment of every day other human beings are being tortured, raped, starved, beaten, etc. Is there some "trick" to sidestepping that pain that I simply don't know about? I'd like to get to that place you seem to be in but I keep getting stuck in that pain. Are those others not "real"? Are they all "illusions"? Is that the way out of pain and into the space of the eternal sunshine of the happy-faced smiley?

When you say 'getting stuck in that pain', are you meaning 'stuck in the thought of that pain'?

:) < ------ love, hello, understanding, pain, laughing, joy, being, yes!

:)

;)

[bito]

If I waited to be "perfect" before doing what I do, I'd never have the pleasure of having known some very beautiful (and very wounded) human beings, some of whom I have helped and some of whom have helped me.

Is there helping happening, or (only) loving?

[sahyo]

no different/same bito

[Noway2Zero]

spiritual_emergency,

For I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come. -Jesus the Christ, Luke 22:18

(I see no cause for celebration until the kingdom of God is restored/everyone realises the Truth.)
fruit of the vine = wine.. wine is used for celebratory situations..

do you think that "Christ" is out there somewhere thinking to himself, "Whew, I'm sure glad I escaped all that pain and suffering -- I'll just hang out in blissland for the rest of eternity and not concern myself with anyone else because they are them and I am me and we are completely separate."?

No.

If I waited to be "perfect" before doing what I do.

in Truth you are perfect, but you are thinking: "waiting to be perfect" so you cant see

For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he -Proverbs 23:7

[spiritual_emergency]

Noway2zero: in Truth you are perfect, but you are thinking: "waiting to be perfect" so you cant see


Okay. I think I can live with that.

Meantime... schrodinger, it was a good chat -- I'm glad we had it. I'm about to get busy with my elsewhereness but there is an e-mail address on my blog should you wish to jot me a line. I'd be interested in hearing a bit more about your exprience, should you feel comfortable sharing it. If you don't, you don't and that's fine too.

marley, I have no idea if we answered your initial question. The topic bobbed and weaved all over the place but hopefully it's given you some food for thought at the very least.

[bito]

Is there helping happening, or (only) loving?

no different/same bito

sayho :love:

When God is seen everywhere, there is no helping, there is no happening.

When there is helping happening, there are two shores created - me and you, here and there, good and evil. God is shoreless. Love is shoreless. In love, nothing happens; in love there is no*thing to happen.

This may seems like a small thought knot, thise sense of helping or being helped, but until there is not one thought of doing love, pure love eludes us.
This is the final bridge that must fall before there is no more 'being stuck in pain'. All actions must be unconditional, without thought of doing.

As for laughing, merriment comes from the knowing that everyone, everywhen, everywhere, everywhat is God. Joy is God, Pain is God. Laughing and compassion are lovers ceaselessly loving ...

:loveyou:

[bito]

Noway2zero: in Truth you are perfect, but you are thinking: "waiting to be perfect" so you cant see

:thumbsup:

God is here, now, even when we cannot see God is here, now. How perfect is that?

:applause:

[sahyo]

bito :love:

When God is seen everywhere, there is no helping, there is no happening.

not any-thought-of-"seen"

When there is helping happening, there are two shores created - me and you, here and there, good and evil. God is shoreless. Love is shoreless. In love, nothing happens; in love there is no*thing to happen.

isn't "helping" which creates illusory shores, but imagining me-here-'someone' is helping you-there-'someone'

cannot "in"/out loving

This may seems like a small thought knot, thise sense of helping or being helped, but until there is not one thought of doing love, pure love eludes us.
This is the final bridge that must fall before there is no more 'being stuck in pain'. All actions must be unconditional, without thought of doing.

yes but using language will still maybe call loving 'assisting, helping'

As for laughing, merriment comes from the knowing that everyone, everywhen, everywhere, everywhat is God. Joy is God, Pain is God. Laughing and compassion are lovers ceaselessly loving ...

yes but laughing can tear-loving when suffering is crying-paining calling for help

:loveyou:

[sahyo]

God is here, now, even when we cannot see God is here, now. How perfect is that?

what cannot see God is herenow bito? ;)

[bito]

sahyo :love:


When God is seen everywhere, there is no helping, there is no happening.

not any-thought-of-"seen"

intuiting :)

When there is helping happening, there are two shores created - me and you, here and there, good and evil. God is shoreless. Love is shoreless. In love, nothing happens; in love there is no*thing to happen.

isn't "helping" which creates illusory shores, but imagining me-here-'someone' is helping you-there-'someone'

:thumbsup:

'helping' thought arises when imagining two someones

cannot "in"/out loving

:thumbsup:

This may seems like a small thought knot, thise sense of helping or being helped, but until there is not one thought of doing love, pure love eludes us.

This is the final bridge that must fall before there is no more 'being stuck in pain'. All actions must be unconditional, without thought of doing.

yes but using language will still maybe call loving 'assisting, helping'

if 'assisting, helping' thought arises, duality

As for laughing, merriment comes from the knowing that everyone, everywhen, everywhere, everywhat is God. Joy is God, Pain is God. Laughing and compassion are lovers ceaselessly loving ...

yes but laughing can tear-loving when suffering is crying-paining calling for help

when imagining suffering 'someone' helping another suffering 'someone', laughing seems the antithesis of helping, of loving, yes

:loveyou:

[bito]

what cannot see God is herenow bito? ;)

sahyo: yes but using language will still maybe call loving 'assisting, helping'

bito: if 'assisting, helping' thought arises, duality

;)

:lol:

[sahyo]

using word "assisting, helping", when talking, doesn't always mean imagining duality-"assisting, helping"

just word bito

;)

:lol:

[sahyo]

when imagining suffering 'someone' helping another suffering 'someone', laughing seems the antithesis of helping, of loving, yes

"yes but laughing can tear-loving when suffering is crying-paining calling for help"
wasn't referring any that you wrote


:D


b :loveyou: ito