Stranger wrote: ↑Sun Feb 12, 2023 12:28 amOf course there is always conditioning by our individuated structure of the ego, that is exactly what I said here:AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Feb 11, 2023 11:51 pm Ok but irrespective of whether we are making the 'right' choices or not, the question is to what extent are our willing gestures conditioned within the context of the personalized soul-forces.
Let's refer to the Newton color theory. I use this example for simplicity, but it could just as easily be applied to practically all secular scientific theories. He set up a prism, passed light through it, and observed the differentiated color spectrum emerge. From that, he concluded there is pure white light existing in the world 'out there', which contains all the colors within it and, when refracted through a prism, the colors emerge. What he failed to account for was his own willing-thinking perspective which designed and executed the experiment. That by itself doesn't give us enough knowledge to determine what exactly is happening, but one thing is for sure - no account of reality can possibly be complete or heading towards completion if it fails to consider the agentic thinking perspective which is always participating in the phenomenal process.
A similar thing happens in your 'account' of the nondual state. You are forgetting that you only arrive to the nondual state because of all the soul-force conditioning which exists in the normal state. The most direct one being your sympathy towards certain spiritual practices, but we must also include practically every factor which led you to be born into a certain family, in a certain place, with a certain upbringing, to attend certain schools, to choose a certain career path, to arrive on the nondual path, etc. All of these reflect the lawful, fractal conditioning forces across incarnations and during the current incarnation which are embedded in your current perspective, and which chooses to do the nondual meditations. We can only safely ignore that conditioning if we declare it irrelevant or forget about it altogether, like the secular scientist. Otherwise we need to squarely confront the fact that it exists and is working into our current perspective regardless of whether we are in the meditative state or not. Then we realize our choice of which curvatures to explore isn't so freely willed after all.
To be clear, we are not claiming you have this conditioning and those pursuing Anthroposophical methods don't. We all have that conditioning. But it is only the modern initiatory method through the brow chakra which allows us to become conscious of the conditioning, not in any abstract intellectual way (as we are speaking of it now), but as living forces which steer our intuitive becoming. In the process of becoming conscious of these forces, we discover certain leeway in the 'riverbed' of our soul-life through which our intuitive activity can find novel ways to flow through and manifest itself in our conceptual and bodily life. I know this likely sounds very monotonous, boring, slow grind, but the living process of engaging this quest is the most intimately real experience we can have. It is the very process of evolving higher cognition so that we can consciously cross the threshold of sleep-death, with discerning judgment intact, and dwell with archetypal beings whose activity is responsible for the Earthly kingdoms, thereby building the gradient to Earthly consciousness.
and it becomes the structure that shapes the individuality of the spiritual activity, but does not control it
In the nondual state when the whole structure of the ego becomes fully transparent though full awareness, all this conditioning is exposed, is still shapes the space of our decisions but does not rigidly control it anymore so that we can consciously make Free-Will decisions based on available higher-level meanings, specifically nondual meanings from higher-level nondual reams that we get access to in the nondual state. On other words, notwithstanding the ego conditioning, there is always a "window of opportunities" within the current conditioning for the Free Will to act according to the higher-level meanings.
Again, let's keep it concrete to first-person experience, because otherwise we are just arguing abstract metaphysics and that cannot possibly go anywhere. You are now saying the soul-conditioning becomes 'fully transparent' yet also 'shapes the space of our decisions' in the nondual state. Remember, this began when you said you had no expectations and no preferences in the nondual state. So you seem to be equivocating now.
But I'm also not sure what you mean by 'Free-Will decisions based on available higher-level nondual meanings'. Are you saying the nondual realm gives you access to more complete information about the normal conceptual-perceptual spectrum which you then use to navigate the latter more freely in Earthly life? If so, then what is a concrete example of this for you?