Mike,mikekatz wrote: ↑Fri Mar 11, 2022 4:41 pmHi AshvinAshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Mar 10, 2022 8:15 pmMike,mikekatz wrote: ↑Thu Mar 10, 2022 8:07 pm
Hi Ashvin
I'm not saying any of that. I'm saying explicitly that self-remembering is the first step. Then, I've also spoken about a second step (non-dualism), and I have never excluded there being other steps. These are the only two steps in my actual experience, but I can't exclude there being others, and many people far wiser than me have claimed there are.
And, in the same way that Cleric is repeating how Thinking is not thinking, I am repeating how self-remembering is not just intellectually assuming I am always present during our normal waking state. And also in the same way Cleric is saying (or at least that's how I understand him), that unless you are Thinking you are just playing intellectual games, I'm saying the same about self-remembering.
Your quote is no doubt true. But, if you are playing intellectual games without actual experiencing, you are not actually stepping up any steps at all. The steps may look like they are going up, but they are still on the horizontal and not the vertical.
But clearly, I'm not expressing myself well.
What reason do you have to be confident there are more steps? Who are the people 'far wiser' and what steps have they claimed beyond the "self-remembering" step and how did they imagine these steps (I realize they cannot be described, but I am looking for any indication of what vicinity of experience they are in, like Cleric provides for Imaginative, Inspirative, Intuitive consciousness)?
No one has claimed what you wrote in bold, and we all agree with the underlined. Along with the 2 questions above, my other question is why you think Cleric's imaginative consciousness is "still on the horizontal and not the vertical"?
First, where did I say I'm confident there are other steps? I said "These are the only two steps in my actual experience, but I can't exclude there being others, and many people far wiser than me have claimed there are."
I've mentioned Gurdjieff extensively in this discussion, and I've mentioned how he structures One World in terms of octaves. he also structures the type of Being in One World, which of these are and are not available to us as we are, and which we can grow into. And he details the capabilities of beings at every level. If you are interested in his ideas, you can download "In Search of the Miraculous" by PD Ouspensky for free.
Also Buddhism structures One World in the same way, with multiple steps on the ladder of Being.
So does Kabbalah.
Christianity has levels of Being as well, Angels, Archangels, etc. But I'm not read up on those so I don't know for sure.
So, if you're trying to intimate that only Cleric is outlining multiple levels of being and multiple levels of One World, that is incorrect.
Second, I never said that "Cleric's imaginative consciousness is still on the horizontal and not the vertical" When I said "But, if you are playing intellectual games without actual experiencing, you are not actually stepping up any steps at all.", I thought I was clearly saying that unless one is self-remembering / Thinking / conscious / present, then whatever one hears will be heard at the horizontal level, no matter how profound the utterances are. "Him who has ears to hear, let him hear." or however it goes.
I would never make a judgement about whether Cleric, you, or anyone else here can hear what is being said. I can only speak for myself, and I have repeatedly said that much of what is said here is beyond my experience.
And my focus on this first step of being present to what is happening in the mind, self-remembering, Thinking, and so on, is because I know myself how easy it is to just get sucked into the horizontal intellectual games of analysing what people are saying, and trying to agree or refute because I do or don't agree with it.
The whole discussion has been about pointing you to the fact that the "multiple levels", which certainly exist, do not only need to be "outlined" as intellectual diagrams to speculate over, but can be concretely and consciously experienced. We can actually grow into those levels of Be-ing with our Thinking-consciousness. Remember, your initial comment to me said:
Mike wrote:Therefore, to find, or get to, or approach (all these words are wrong, just metaphors or pointers), One World, to experience non-dual, one has to experience the consciousness out of which duality arises. You can't "trace back" to non-dual by examining "thought-forms", because "thought forms" are by their very nature already dual. If you observe your thought forms, there is your consciousness observing, and the thought forms, and you are in duality.
...
And mindfulness allows us into the next step:
The only way out of duality is the way of the non-dual masters. Understanding that consciousness is the root of everything, the root of me, and the root of of the world, Consciousness has to turn back on itself, dropping everything else. This is not an action, because action already implies duality. It's an inaction.
To be clear, I have no problem with this response and encourage such comments, but it certainly sounded like a judgment on our approach which we then sought to also address. So then Cleric illustrated why inaction, in the sense you were using it in that comment and subsequent comments, will get us stuck at the mindfulness step, and how we can evolve beyond that step by remaining connected with our esssential spiritual (thinking) activity as we ascend to higher octaves in full consciousness. You now seem to be admitting this can be done, but for some reason you don't feel Cleric or Steiner did it. They speak to us of a conscious path precisely into these higher octaves where the more conscious angelic beings reside who weave together our inner experience. So my question remains, what part of that are you now disputing and why?