Lou Gold wrote: ↑Tue Mar 01, 2022 1:20 am
Cleric,
Perhaps your audience could better grok what you are saying if you could phrase as if you were speaking directly to a five-year old child. Doing that would offer a concrete example of the use of language for a child-level understanding and give meaning for your audience to your assertion,
This is not difficult to understand. It's child-level-easy to understand. Can you do it as a first-person adult speaking directly to a second-person child?
I can indeed do that, Lou. I can speak in non-intellectual pictures - because this is what children readily absorb in the forms of fairy tales for example. These are deep archetypal imaginative symbols which the child doesn't at all comprehend in its waking consciousness but the soul absorbs them with great joy. These living stories take hold as kernels, as seeds, from which certain faculties grow and reach maturation only much later in life.
The thing is that once again you demand simple stories but this doesn't at all mean that they'll feel agreeable to you. For example, the story about fall and redemption. This is one of the kernels which can awaken forces deep in the soul when absorbed properly.
And at this point you'll quickly turn the other side (at least judging from statements you've made in the past). If I remember correctly you've said before "Yeah, it's a nice story but it's a Biblical story - only one of the many possible". So once again you turn from story teller to philosopher, who doubts, weighs and so on.
We shouldn't delude ourselves. Things presented simply and plainly doesn't make them sympathetic. As a matter of fact, the more clearly things are presented (and thus the more difficult to logically reject), the more irrational the listener becomes, simply by trying to manifest their antipathy towards the ideas in any way possible.
lorenzop wrote: ↑Tue Mar 01, 2022 2:50 am
Cleric provides the child-like easy to understand example of an air hose supplying to a diver in his post above. He is speaking of more than reason, predictably, participating and cause/effect in nature. He is adding a feeling or mood to every perception-actually he says the feeling proceeds the perception.
IOW, seeing is a feeling/meaning baked into reality.
The part I don’t understand is how he proves the above via an argument.
I think it’s possible to convert/appreciate everything as a mood, but first one has to decide between Christian, Hindu, Native American, etc belief system THEN be committed to that every minute of every day.
I think Cleric would say we are already ‘feeling’ but missing out of the really good stuff, which just happens to be Christian good stuff.
Lorenzo, you miss the point here again. The question is precisely to realize that no matter what you decide between (Christian, Hindu, etc.) there's still
the actual, the real thinking spiritual activity which does the deciding. Our thinking is obviously a reality that can be quite independent (above) of any of the
outer religious forms. The times for equipping humans with dogmas and rituals, in the rails of which their lives must flow, are gone. These were the helping wheels, the scaffolds, around which young humanity was guided to grow. We're speaking of something completely concrete and real - it's the living beings that we are, which think about these old religious shells, and must now draw the direction for our development through our own understanding and Love.
You ask about a proof. How would you prove to a dying man that he has ruined his life through his chaotic way of life? There's plenty of evidence about the harm of various foods, liquids and gases that people put in their bodies, yet it's quite clear that many of them continue doing it.
If contemporary people were not raised in complete materialism and default dishonesty, anyone would see immediately that in almost all cases the primary driving force of human conduct is desire. Logic only comes second and only if it somehow supports the desire. So we have the same inversion as before.
Humanity is sick. I think no sane person will deny that. Yet everyone chooses to deal differently with it. Those who don't want to burden themselves with it say "It's just the way it is. There's nothing to be fixed. MAL especially created the sandbox like this because this is what it wanted to experience".
But at the same time, anyone with at least the most basic spiritual hygiene, knows very well that with our thinking spirit, we're above desire, habit, vice. It's not easy to alter these heavily inertial soul patterns - we need certain knowledge and effort to do so. Just like we need knowledge about keeping the body healthy, so we need certain knowledge about how to feed and organize the soul. The food for the soul are our thoughts and feelings, which for most people pass completely uncontrollably like torrents. We have learned to select our foods, to wash them, to cook them, but as far as our soul is concerned we're indiscriminate pipe through which any kinds of substances pass without any chance of us of noticing them, let alone filter them. Yet with some knowledge and effort it is perfectly possible to gain this vigilance and the changes in our inner states are quickly appreciated. Only who has never made even the most preliminary steps in that direction can argue that it is impossible (for example by saying that we're hard wired in the brain in this way, that MAL has made us thus for a reason and we shouldn't interfere, etc.)
So it's once again the dualism of non-dualism. There's a hard boundary (which is no other but the great divider of death) between the Earthly realm and the supposed other world.
The story of fall and redemption is really about the fact that there's really One World (by the way Ashvin's
summary 1,2,3,4... is very nice in that regard). The fall is a kind of degeneration of the One World, where decoherence, conflict and opposition take the upper hand. Humans have taken part in this fall largely instinctively, just as children are often mean to other children, they hit them and take their toys, not because of calculated and well reasoned actions but of subconscious desires. Redemption is achieved by awakening to the fact that even amidst great decoherence, our spiritual core is nevertheless part of the same that One World. It is up to us to develop the faculties through which to transform the chaotic state we've descended into.
This is huge work, no doubt about it. It requires not only effort but also many sacrifices. And that's the simple reason why people instinctively prefer to close their eyes for the prospect that such a work lies before our souls. Then the veil is invented, the soul interest groups and so on - anything, as long as it keeps the hard boundary between the worlds intact, which alone can put our conscience to sleep by believing that there's no point to bridge the worlds.
This is really the most urgent waking call for humans today. As long as we imagine that we're physically and psychically sick 'by design' and we have chosen to experience this (thus we shouldn't try to interfere) we're firmly subscribing to the dualism of non-dualism. We're here to watch a movie (even if it is a horror movie) and stay as uninvolved and detached as possible.
Hopefully more people will come to their senses and realize the things which are really completely common sense. Just as what I do today will have its consequences also tomorrow when I wake up after night sleep, so everything we do collectively, shapes the unfoldment of the One World's metamorphosis. It seems after thousands of years of development humans still haven't learnt the law of cause and effect.