Whirlpool's core/first motion

[Soul_of_Shu]

I'd like to think I am growing and evolving from my Maya dream character identification as well, in ways completely unsuspected even a few months ago.

Inner desires and intentions determine what we can perceive and conceive (if we understand idealism seriously), and since I now know you have no desire or intention to understand what we write about devoleping higher spiritual capacities, there is no point continuing in writing to reach that understanding with you. If you want to believe Cleric and I are just saying you don't yet understand because we are vain or fickle people, and it has nothing to do with your just recently admitted desire not "to go much further", even though you have "no doubt you could go much further", that's fine.

Well we keep circling around the sticking point here. I don't believe that you or Cleric are anything but well-intentioned. I understand that the Revelation, or Illumination, or Awakening, whatever the preferred descriptor, unfolds in stages, just as with metamorphosis in nature, and is not a one-and-done event. This is hardly breaking news. Cleric has stated that indeed the initial stage can be contingent upon some crucial, integral stage-specific trigger, that can seemingly come by Grace, out-of-the-blue, so to speak, without any prior interest or practice. I suggest that there then follows a period of intense work/activity specific to the stage that one is urgently, irresistibly compelled to carry out, e.g. a period of intense newfound creativity—in this case in the form of poetic expression—linked to a sudden awareness of, and relationship with, a 'higher' realm, and perhaps some limited, tentative communing with entities associated with that realm. Now, to re-state my intuition, when I say that no doubt I could go further, beyond that limit, that does not automatically mean that I can go much further, absent the next integral stage-specific trigger, which then initiates the work/activity specific to the next stage, at which point, just as in the prior stage, one is urgently, irresistibly compelled to carry it out—such as the kind of activity that Cleric is urgently carrying out, and his many attempts to show what that activity is precisely. So one can't rule out that while I feel no such urgency now, with the next stage-specific trigger, that compelling urgency will be felt, and it won't be a question of 'I don't want or need to', or 'one's just too shiftless to be bothered', rather it will be like a 'there's no way I can not do this' situation, even maybe do-or-die. And absent that stage-specific trigger, no amount of imploring one to 'stop being shiftless, and just do the work', or diligent attempts to read about, meditate upon, or carry out the exercises will be the difference that makes the difference, in lieu of the stage-specific trigger. And after that, then will come the next stage-specific trigger, and the next work/activity associated with that next stage, and so on.

Now of course tell me how wrong this intuition is, that I'm just making lazy excuses, because I just don't want or intend to go further. I also didn't intend or want the initial stage-specific trigger of the Revelation, and yet it came. Why then should the next phase require me to want or intend it? Why would I not then be urgently, irresistibly compelled to do the work specific to it?

So perhaps we should make a date to meet down the road. Who knows what transformations there will be, what stage-specific 'work' one will be doing? Albeit, the change here, at 72, may be that I won't be appearing in corporeal form, and the 'work' may be happening in some alternate incarnation. Or maybe I'll be on the angel side of the encounter

[Soul_of_Shu]

Neither of you wanted that... wouldn't you undo the last 24 hours or so of this dialogue if you could?

Actually, as the mod, I could undo it But no, I would not. It's all quite valid and instructive, IMO. I love that Ashvin is able to challenge me so eloquently. Not taken personally here.

[AshvinP]

I'd like to think I am growing and evolving from my Maya dream character identification as well, in ways completely unsuspected even a few months ago.

Inner desires and intentions determine what we can perceive and conceive (if we understand idealism seriously), and since I now know you have no desire or intention to understand what we write about devoleping higher spiritual capacities, there is no point continuing in writing to reach that understanding with you. If you want to believe Cleric and I are just saying you don't yet understand because we are vain or fickle people, and it has nothing to do with your just recently admitted desire not "to go much further", even though you have "no doubt you could go much further", that's fine.

Well we keep circling around the sticking point here. I don't believe that you or Cleric are anything but well-intentioned. I understand that the Revelation, or Illumination, or Awakening, whatever the preferred descriptor, unfolds in stages, just as with metamorphosis in nature, and is not a one-and-done event. This is hardly breaking news. Cleric has stated that indeed the initial stage can be contingent upon some crucial, integral stage-specific trigger, that can seemingly come by Grace, out-of-the-blue, so to speak, without any prior interest or practice. I suggest that there then follows a period of intense work/activity specific to the stage that one is urgently, irresistibly compelled to carry out, e.g. a period of intense newfound creativity—in this case in the form of poetic expression—linked to a sudden awareness of, and relationship with, a 'higher' realm, and perhaps some limited, tentative communing with entities associated with that realm. Now, to re-state my intuition, when I say that no doubt I could go further, beyond that limit, that does not automatically mean that I can go much further, absent the next integral stage-specific trigger, which then initiates the work/activity specific to the next stage, at which point, just as in the prior stage, one is urgently, irresistibly compelled to carry it out—such as the kind of activity that Cleric is urgently carrying out in his many attempts to show what that activity is precisely. So one can't rule out that while I feel no such urgency now, with the next stage-specific trigger, that compelling urgency will be felt, and it won't be a question of 'I don't want or need to', or 'one's just too shiftless to be bothered', rather it will be like a 'there's no way I can not do this' situation, even maybe do-or-die. And absent that stage-specific trigger, no amount of imploring one to 'stop being shiftless, and just do the work', or diligent attempts to read about, meditate upon, or carry out the exercises will be the difference that makes the difference, in lieu of the stage-specific trigger. And after that, then will come the next stage-specific trigger, and the next work/activity associated with that next stage, and so on.

Now of course tell me how wrong this intuition is, that I'm just making lazy excuses, because I just don't want or intend to go further. I also didn't intend or want the initial stage-specific trigger of the Revelation, and yet it came. Why then should the next phase require me to want or intend it? Why would I not then be urgently, irresistibly compelled to do the work specific to it?

So perhaps we should make a date to meet down the road. Who knows what transformations there will be, what stage-specific 'work' one will be doing? Albeit, the change here, at 72, may be that I won't be appearing in corporeal form, and the 'work' may be happening in some alternate incarnation. Or maybe I'll be on the angel side of the encounter

It's all much more simple than this, Dana. We read your post above and think, "ok, he still doesn't get what we mean, let's try another way to explain it." That's just the plain fact of the matter from our perspective - based on the above, you still don't get what we intend to mean with all of our spiritual evolutionary talk. We assume maybe our writing wasn't clear enough or you just need more metaphoric angles to view it from. But, isn't it reasonable to conclude, instead, that no amount of new writing or angles will help you imagine the meaning we are pointing to, simply because you don't desire to imagine it?

I'm not speculating on the reason why you don't desire it. But, besides stating it outright in the previous post, yet again above it shows in the fact that you feel something must trigger you to creative thinking urgency. You feel some Divine force must implant the desire within you before you can heed its call (PoF shows how the implanting has already been done and the call has already been made in the fact that we are spiritual-thinking beings). And, as Cleric tried to illustrate, this desire to avoid active seeking or lack of desire to actively seek (depending on how you look at it) also makes it near impossible for the words I am writing now to make any sense to you. I will simply quote Steiner again and ask that you read him as carefully and with least amount of prejudment as possible. Then maybe you can summarize in your own words what you think he means and how it relates to what we are saying to you, i.e. to your own orientation towards the spiritual. I know, it sounds like I am givng you afterschool homework now, but I don't know any other way we can get back on a fruitful path of shared understanding.

Now it can happen that at some particular time in his life, without making any special preparation for it, a person discovers that higher organs of this nature have been developing within him. This will mean that a kind of involuntary self-awakening has taken place. He will find that he has through this become a completely changed man. His whole inner experience is now vastly enriched. And he will be fully persuaded that no knowledge of the physical world could ever afford him such bliss, such serene satisfaction, such inner warmth, as can the knowledge that opens up before him now that he has a faculty of cognition that is independent of physical impressions. Strength and confidence will stream into his will from a spiritual world.

Such instances of self-initiation do occur. They should however not lead one to imagine that the right thing to do is simply to wait for it and make no effort towards obtaining Initiation by means of a properly ordered training. We have no need to speak here any further of self-initiation, since it can come about without the person's following any rules or precepts. What we are concerned with is how the organs of perception that are latent in man's soul may be developed by spiritual training. If people do not feel any particular urge to take steps for their own inner development, it is easy for them to think that since the life of man goes forward under the guidance of spiritual Powers, he ought not to interfere in their leadership but should wait quietly for the moment when these Powers shall deem it right to open to him another world. They will feel that any desire to intermeddle in this way with the wisdom of spiritual guidance is quite unjustified, and bespeaks a kind of presumption. One who takes this view will only be persuaded to modify it when a certain line of thought begins to make a strong impression on him — namely when he is ready to say: “The wise guidance of spiritual Powers has given me certain faculties. It has not bestowed these faculties on me for me to leave them unemployed, but rather that I may put them to use. The wisdom of the guidance is to be seen in the fact that seeds have been planted in me of a higher state of consciousness; and I fail to understand the guidance aright if I do not regard it as a duty to set before me the high ideal: that whatever can become manifest to man through the development of his spiritual powers shall become so manifest.” When such a thought has taken strong enough hold, then the mistrust that was felt of any training for the attainment of a higher state of consciousness shall disappear.

PS - I know age is seen as an important factor here, and in some ways it is. But in some ways, your old age and life situation makes it easier for you to engage the inner path we are speaking of, with more time to dedicate and less life distractions to deal with. Your mind is still very sharp and creative, clearly. Our work between birth and death is simply preparing the soil for our true work, our second birth into the spiritual, between death and rebirth, where we continue exactly where we left off during life (but not from the same perspective, obviously, but the polar opposite perspective).

[Soul_of_Shu]

And, as Cleric tried to illustrate, this desire to avoid active seeking or lack of desire to actively seek (depending on how you look at it) also makes it near impossible for the words I am writing now to make any sense to you. I will simply quote Steiner again and ask that you read him as carefully and with least amount of prejudment as possible. Then maybe you can summarize in your own words what you think he means and how it relates to what we are saying to you, i.e. to your own orientation towards the spiritual. I know, it sounds like I am givng you afterschool homework now, but I don't know any other way we can get back on a fruitful path of shared understanding.

Told ya'll I was in for some more cross ex ... I read the Steiner quote the first time, and a 2nd when you re-referenced it earlier, and just now a 3rd, and not just simply concluding that because Steiner wrote it, it must be true, I compare it to my own intuitions, and find some similarities, and some points of divergence. It's quite possible that we won't get onto a path of shared understanding and reconciling of those points of divergence, short of one actually having that discussion with Steiner (since your understanding is just recapitulating Steiner's understanding, and by your own admission, not based on your own 'awakening' experience), whereby Steiner could actually address why those divergences can't be reconciled to my satisfaction. That not being possible, I'm left with your opinion that your interpretation of the Steiner quote trumps my intuitive understanding based on my own experience, and that those divergences are invalid points of debate, because I just don't understand that Steiner is correct. Still, I'm going to take some further time to digest this as food for thought, to further deconstruct Steiner's take, and see if there is reason to abandon one's own intuitive understanding based on one's own actual experience, and instead vicariously adopt someone else's experience and intuitions. But I'm busy with some landscaping work, which leaves one quite tired by the end of the day, so allow me some time to give this the time it deserves.

[AshvinP]

And, as Cleric tried to illustrate, this desire to avoid active seeking or lack of desire to actively seek (depending on how you look at it) also makes it near impossible for the words I am writing now to make any sense to you. I will simply quote Steiner again and ask that you read him as carefully and with least amount of prejudment as possible. Then maybe you can summarize in your own words what you think he means and how it relates to what we are saying to you, i.e. to your own orientation towards the spiritual. I know, it sounds like I am givng you afterschool homework now, but I don't know any other way we can get back on a fruitful path of shared understanding.

Told ya'll I was in for some more cross ex ... I read the Steiner quote the first time, and a 2nd when you re-referenced it earlier, and just now a 3rd, and not just simply concluding that because Steiner wrote it, it must be true, I compare it to my own intuitions, and find some similarities, and some points of divergence. It's quite possible that we won't get onto a path of shared understanding and reconciling of those points of divergence, short of one actually having that discussion with Steiner (since your understanding is just recapitulating Steiner's understanding, and by your own admission, not based on your own 'awakening' experience), whereby Steiner could actually address why those divergences can't be reconciled to my satisfaction. That not being possible, I'm left with your opinion that your interpretation of the Steiner quote trumps my intuitive understanding based on my own experience, and that those divergences are invalid points of debate, because I just don't understand that Steiner is correct. Still, I'm going to take some further time to digest this as food for thought, to further deconstruct Steiner's take, and see if there is reason to abandon one's own intuitive understanding based on one's own actual experience, and instead vicariously adopt someone else's experience and intuitions. But I'm busy with some landscaping work, which leaves one quite tired by the end of the day, so allow me some time to give this the time it deserves.

One doesn't set out to master the guitar and become Jimmy Page in one fine moment. I never said I'm not in the process of awakening, only I'm not fully awakened, nor will I be fully awakened until I merge with the Godhead billions of fractal evolutionary reiterations from now. Nothing will be added to me in this quest unless I seek first the Kingdom of God in righteousness. Every single percept and concept in the sensory world is an invitation to seek that Kingdom through spritualized thinking and ego-consciousness.

I know you read Steiner quotes and most of what we post here. That's exactly why I am convinced your slightly examined desire to avoid active seeking of the spiritual, entirely interwoven and continuous with the sensory, is the only obstacle to your understanding what you are reading. We have a reached shared understanding, though. If this path isn't truly desired, then any further attempts to point towards this path, even if you reluctantly entered upon it, will feel like a compulsion. It will lead to resentment - genuine offers to help you understand will feel like cross examinations. That's not what I want.

So I agree it's better you pursue the path you truly desire for now. This is my last post to you for the foreseeable future, since I'm also not interested with indulging passive resignation to the way things are in this materialized world. Cleric and I still write here because we know that, if even one individual overcomes ingrained material desires and habits to awaken for the spiritual, more advance would have been made than probably all other philosophy forums combined, even if they have 1,000 people commenting each. So I will continue to post as long as there is still one other person genuinely interested in understanding and pursuing the philosophy of spiritual activity.

[Soul_of_Shu]

So I agree it's better you pursue the path you truly desire for now.

Ditto that ... so likewise pursue away to your heart's desire. Not sure why it is you imagine I must feel resentment. Seems a projection, as I feel no resentment whatsoever, not even towards one's rapist. What I'm compelled by is the Revelation, with more stages yet to come. As mentioned, it may well be better we give it much more considerable time, beyond just some foreseeable future of forum activity, at least a year or two, and should the forum still be a place where we may likely interact, or if not perhaps elsewhere, then we'll see where we're at, based on the adage that 'by their fruits you shall know them' ... because even in the case of the metamorphosis of a psyche, to every fruition there is a season under heaven.

take care ❤

[lorenzop]

Here is my understanding of 'spiritual growth/worlds/evolutionary stuff' - offered only as a humble data point.
I see 2 ways of interpreting this 'stuff', one, as a different content, including stuff like angels, past lives, spritits of dead, heaven and hell, Atlantis, etc. And a second interpretation being of essentially same 'wordly' content, but evolved perception, intuition, clairvoyance, etc. That is, direct perception of the celestial nature of the everyday nature, of people, etc.
These two are not mutually exclusive, and,
I do not deny that these two interpretations are valid, however, the second is of far greater interest to myself.
I would suggest that the second, increased\enhanced perception, world is enriched to maximum value, is a natural consequence of spiritual growth. We've all experienced at least a taste of this; when we love someone or something, our heart is full, and we appreciate this person fully.
The first interpretion - Being enchanted with spiritual content such as angels, past lives and Atlantis, is an inclination or a developed habit - it is not a requirement.

[AshvinP]

Here is my understanding of 'spiritual growth/worlds/evolutionary stuff' - offered only as a humble data point.
I see 2 ways of interpreting this 'stuff', one, as a different content, including stuff like angels, past lives, spritits of dead, heaven and hell, Atlantis, etc. And a second interpretation being of essentially same 'wordly' content, but evolved perception, intuition, clairvoyance, etc. That is, direct perception of the celestial nature of the everyday nature, of people, etc.
These two are not mutually exclusive, and,
I do not deny that these two interpretations are valid, however, the second is of far greater interest to myself.
I would suggest that the second, increased\enhanced perception, world is enriched to maximum value, is a natural consequence of spiritual growth. We've all experienced at least a taste of this; when we love someone or something, our heart is full, and we appreciate this person fully.
The first interpretion - Being enchanted with spiritual content such as angels, past lives and Atlantis, is an inclination or a developed habit - it is not a requirement.

That's a great observation, Lorenzo. In fact, this is the distinction that makes all the difference, as people are fond of saying here.

We need to confront the fact that we are all under tyranny of the modern dualism - the world as it really is vs. the world as we perceive and think about it. I probably have made this metaphor before, but let me offer it again.

As we evolved into more precise cognitive consciousness, portions of the Light spectrum were veiled from us that are still sensible to lower organisms. We no longer perceive ultraviolet, infrared, etc. The same thing applies with Sound frequencies. Where has the ultraviolet spectrum gone? Nowhere. It still permeates all of our experience, but is veiled from our current cognitive perception. It is still influencing our bodily organism in precise and lawful ways. Does it make any sense to say there is a world of Light and Sound (the spiritual) behind the world we perceive (the sensory), and we use the visible and audible spectrum of light and sound (the sensory and conceptual) to model that 'world-in-itself'? This is the modern understanding of human knowledge, proliferated through Cartesian dualism and Kantian epistemology, but it is adding in another 'noumenal' world which is entirely unwarranted from experience. Instead, it only makes sense to say that any localized perspective, at any given time, only perceives a narrow spectrum of the total World Content in its perceptions and conceptions, and the rest has become supersensible in the course of evolution.

This also explains how our concepts of the spiritual (concepts are also perceptions - anything we can make the object of our thinking is a "perception") are decohered content, i.e. mostly veiled, from what begins as higher (more cohered) ideas - intuitions, inspirations, imaginations - which have become supersensible for normal waking cognition. These things shoudn't be universalized with the 3rd person view from nowhere. Just as there is great differentiation between humans and other organisms when it comes to perceiving the Light and Sound spectrums, there is great differentiation within the capacities of humanity itself. And we should confront the fact that our modern sensibility simply doesn't like this! It wants to imagine universal equality across all capacities and it wants to imagine it now. But this differentiation is simply a fact of existence - it shouldn't be up for debate. We know, for ex., that some have synesthesia - their sensory system is more integrated than the average person. On that dimension, they are more evolved.

We can never move from purely abstract spiritual understanding, where there is separate world of spiritual content, to a living understanding where everything is interwoven and the higher spiritual is veiled according to each individual's evolved capacities, unless we are also willing to admit this evolutionary differentiation. If we desire the convenience of outwardly declaring everything and everyone equal, even while inwardly we know this isn't the case, then we are stuck with abstract understanding of the spiritual, no matter how well-refined our concepts are. We will feel, how can someone speak so precisely about past evoutionary stages of humanity when I myself have no idea about such things or how to even gain knowledge of such things? That feeling is born of the universalizing view from nowhere. This is one of the main contradictions which needs to be confronted honestly and resolved within each individual.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Neither of you wanted that... wouldn't you undo the last 24 hours or so of this dialogue if you could?

I am not sure that pressing people to take a stance and declare themselves ready or not ready to make the effort to ponder given ideas going forward is valid, or even useful. I understand extreme focus and determination, but there is a freedom on both sides to engage in a conversation. That freedom is worth something... and there is a possibility on both sides to, even unexpectedly, bring something of value to the other... isn't it so?
And after all, the choice to refrain from commenting is always available on both sides at every moment. Isn't it enough?
'If I had known your answer in advance I wouldn't have spent my words'. Can it really work this way. Everything can change at every turn. I may be fine with where I am today only to realize tomorrow that a new call is there and I feel ready to cover new ground. Then what will I do with my lazy-thinker label?

Federica ... Speaking of 'what we want', it occurs to me this morning, while again musing over the more recent commentary in this thread, and trying to get at the reasons for the apparent disconnect, that aside from my brief reply about not wanting to undo that commentary, no-one addressed your astute observation, which I largely concur with ... perhaps because its astuteness was self-evident.

Reading it again, I feel it also pertinently hints at the points I'm trying to get across, about why it is anyone may not be doing the work/activity that someone else is pressingly imploring they 'should' be doing. It has been stated repeatedly that the reason is simply because they don't want to, with perhaps some innuendo that they don't want to because they're too shiftless to be bothered doing the work—as a parent might admonish their kid for not tidying their bedroom. And in a way I can agree with the notion that indeed they don't want to, but not agree with the latter conclusion about why they don't want to.

So let's be clear that one is not suggesting that there is no work to be done. Quite the contrary, there is much stage-specific work to be done. To use the analogy of the unfolding integral stages of metamorphosis, at the risk of too much personification of non-human creatures, it is indeed the case that all the potential stages are seeded into the creaturely egg, such that the creature must indeed do and complete the crucial work/activity specific to each stage. Indeed there's no real option of resistance, as it's pretty much do or die. So once the hatching is triggered, the larval stage creature, irresistibly impelled (perhaps more apt than saying 'compelled'), begins the stage-specific work/activity of voraciously devouring its host plant. And that indeed is all it 'wants' to do, and rightfully so. It doesn't 'want' to be doing the stage-specific work/activity of spinning a chrysalis, for which it is not ready; it doesn't 'want' to be doing the stage-specific imago work/activity of taking nectar from blossoms, for which it just is not equipped. And there are stage-specific 'seeded' triggers that initiate each transition into the next phase. So it is pointless to suggest that it should not be wanting to do what is specific and integral to the stage it's at, and instead should bypass that, and absent the triggers it should be wanting to do some other stage-specific work/activity—let alone suggesting that this lack of wanting is due to laziness.

Now of course it can be argued that human creatures are a different case, because they have free will, and thus can resist any given stage-specific work, such that, even as it may be do-or-die, they can choose to die, or at least languish their lives away, avoiding their destiny. However, given the presumed deathlessness of the human psyche, which outlives any given incarnational expression, can they resist indefinitely?

[Federica]

Neither of you wanted that... wouldn't you undo the last 24 hours or so of this dialogue if you could?

I am not sure that pressing people to take a stance and declare themselves ready or not ready to make the effort to ponder given ideas going forward is valid, or even useful. I understand extreme focus and determination, but there is a freedom on both sides to engage in a conversation. That freedom is worth something... and there is a possibility on both sides to, even unexpectedly, bring something of value to the other... isn't it so?
And after all, the choice to refrain from commenting is always available on both sides at every moment. Isn't it enough?
'If I had known your answer in advance I wouldn't have spent my words'. Can it really work this way. Everything can change at every turn. I may be fine with where I am today only to realize tomorrow that a new call is there and I feel ready to cover new ground. Then what will I do with my lazy-thinker label?

Federica ... Speaking of 'what we want', it occurs to me this morning, while again musing over the more recent commentary in this thread, and trying to get at the reasons for the apparent disconnect, that aside from my brief reply about not wanting to undo that commentary, no-one addressed your astute observation, which I largely concur with ... perhaps because its astuteness was self-evident.

Reading it again, I feel it also pertinently hints at the points I'm trying to get across, about why it is anyone may not be doing the work/activity that someone else is pressingly imploring they 'should' be doing. It has been stated repeatedly that the reason is simply because they don't want to, with perhaps some innuendo that they don't want to because they're too shiftless to be bothered doing the work—as a parent might admonish their kid for not tidying their bedroom. And in a way I can agree with the notion that indeed they don't want to, but not agree with the latter conclusion about why they don't want to.

So let's be clear that one is not suggesting that there is no work to be done. Quite the contrary, there is much stage-specific work to be done. To use the analogy of the unfolding integral stages of metamorphosis, at the risk of too much personification of non-human creatures, it is indeed the case that all the potential stages are seeded into the creaturely egg, such that the creature must indeed do and complete the crucial work/activity specific to each stage. Indeed there's no real option of resistance, as it's pretty much do or die. So once the hatching is triggered, the larval stage creature, irresistibly impelled (perhaps more apt than saying 'compelled'), begins the stage-specific work/activity of voraciously devouring its host plant. And that indeed is all it 'wants' to do, and rightfully so. It doesn't 'want' to be doing the stage-specific work/activity of spinning a chrysalis, for which it is not ready; it doesn't 'want' to be doing the stage-specific imago work/activity of taking nectar from blossoms, for which it just is not equipped. And there are stage-specific 'seeded' triggers that initiate each transition into the next phase. So it is pointless to suggest that it should not be wanting to do what is specific and integral to the stage it's at, and instead should bypass that, and absent the triggers it should be wanting to do some other stage-specific work/activity—let alone suggesting that this lack of wanting is due to laziness.

Now of course it can be argued that human creatures are a different case, because they have free will, and thus can resist any given stage-specific work, such that, even as it may be do-or-die, they can choose to die, or at least languish their lives away, avoiding their destiny. However, given the presumed deathlessness of the human psyche, which outlives any given incarnational expression, can they resist indefinitely?

Soul_of_Shu : )
Being very much on the side of the action, I was in good position to notice that in our to-the-minute simultaneous posts yesterday, you concluded: 'one can't rule out that while I feel no such urgency now (...) that compelling urgency will be felt', as I was concluding that one may be fine with where one is today only to realize tomorrow that a new call is there and one feel ready to cover new ground again. It's down to us putting the same word lazy - your lazy excuses, my lazy-thinker label - at the center. You make it very clear, your dreamscape retreat could start feeling exceedingly tight any moment...