AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Sep 19, 2021 9:15 pmEugene I wrote: ↑Sun Sep 19, 2021 9:03 pm Ashvin, I find the Western approach rooted in Christianity is somewhat unbalanced and too "needy" almost to the point of neurosis. On the other hand, neoadvaita is an opposite extreme that can be problematic and nihilistic. Christine presented a balanced approach, which is also shared by many other more mature nonduality teachers nowadays (Spira, Adyashanti and so on).
“Virtue is the golden mean between two vices, the one of excess and the other of deficiency” — Aristotle
Who is Christine? Anna lost me in the first 15 seconds... "for no reason at all". It's amazing to me people can go around the world, looking at the ever-evolving, intricately delicate phenomenon which confronts them, and completely shut down their curiosity. There is no "balance" in such an approach, it is pure thoughtlessness disguised as "spiritual wisdom".
I just watched some more to 1:17... she seems tweaked out on something. Regardless, "I don't even want to say Oneness, because that makes it seem like there can be another... ZERO is more accurate, because there is nothing here". It's like her subconscious is speaking through her ego to warn us not to listen to her ego, by making her words so obviously nihilistic and devoid of meaning, but I guess some people still convince themselves it is meaningful and worth listening to.
I'm still in the habit of saying "it's amazing to me that people can...", but really it is not. That is what Cleric and myself keep posting about as it continually manifests in every sphere of life, including metaphysical idealist forums. I posted this on another thread:
To begin with, the attention of the soul is directed to certain events in the world that surrounds us. Such events are, on the one hand, life that is budding, growing, and flourishing, and on the other hand, all phenomena connected with fading, decaying, and withering.
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Yet it must not be thought that much progress can be made if the senses are blunted to the world. First look at the things as keenly and as intently as you possibly can...
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If the attention be frequently fixed on the phenomena of growing, blooming and flourishing, a feeling remotely allied to the sensation of a sunrise will ensue, while the phenomena of fading and decaying will produce an experience comparable, in the same way, to the slow rising of the moon on the horizon
When that was written 100+ years ago, it probably was not too difficult for someone to leave their home and walk to a place where this exercise could be done with relative tranquility. Now it is damn near impossible unless you are way out in the middle of nowhere. Is that because (a) there are no longer perceptible things which are growing and flourishing near things which are decaying and withering, or is it because (b) we have a hard time perceiving anything that is growing and flourishing even when it is there to be perceived, or is there actually not very much difference between A and B, due to the inseperable relationship between perception and cognition? We say it is the latter and it should be major cause for concern. People who shut down curiosity and thought about the detailed processes of Nature are not just making "personal" decisions, they are contributing to an accelerating trend of deadened thought and perception in the world, especially if they try to convince others to do the same and that doing so is actually beneficial in some way. These are trends we can easily verify for ourselves, if not from general knowledge of recent history, certainly from attentive thought to what is happening in our immediate vicinity. Then we might sense the urgency which people were writing with decades and centuries ago, so that we may still yet "save [some of] the appearances".
Barfield circa 1950 wrote:Imagination is not, as some poets have thought, simply synonymous with good. It may be either good or evil. As long as art remained primarily mimetic, the evil which imagination could do was limited by nature. Again, as long as it was treated as an amusement, the evil which it could do was limited in scope. But in an age when the connection between imagination and figuration is beginning to be dimly realized, when the fact of the directionally creator relation is beginning to break through into consciousness, both the good and the evil latent in the working of imagination begin to appear unlimited.
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It may be objected that this is a very small matter, and that it will be a long time before the imagination of man substantially alters those appearances of nature with which his figuration supplies him. But then I am taking the long view. Even so, we need not be too confident. Even if the pace of change remained the same, one who is really sensitive to (for example) the difference between the medieval collective representations and our own will be aware that, without traveling any greater distance than we have come since the fourteenth century, we could very well move forward into a chaotically empty or fantastically hideous world. But the pace of change has not remained the same. It has accelerated and is accelerating.
And before it is mentioned, let me make clear I am not proposing anyone should be forced to stop believing or saying whatever they want. If one follows the logic of what I have written, that "solution" would make no sense or difference, since it is precisely our inner desire, feeling, and thought which needs to change. Such things will never change as a result of coercion, and in fact such coercion will likely reinforce the thought patterns one is trying to force out. It only occurs by way of voluntary desire and thought on the part of each individual.