Enlightenment
- Thread starter Road to Nowhere
- Start date
Trying to unravel certain episodes of my 'past' life is quite scary! I am trying to see why things happened as they did, I have plenty to choose from! There are no such things as coincidences, what happens is meant to happen - no matter how painful. For example I was diagnosed with cancer in 2003. Why? A big question indeed! I'm not just restricting myself to the physical reasons, but what was my inner dialogue like? I know at this time I was deeply depressed, so you can guess what my inner dialogue was like! This I am sure caused harm, the mental/psychic activity which goes on often unnoticed had an effect on my physical body. So this Rabbit Hole may end up being a Black Hole...........
To be continued.................
To be continued.................
What Neville says is: your imagination creates your reality. Hence the inner dialogue needs monitoring. No wonder most of my life has been a disaster! My inner dialogue has gone under the radar, so no wonder all havoc has been let loose! I went back to my teens and can see how I was dominated by my negative inner dialogue(I will use ID from here on in)! I am now 14 and I am feasting on the flesh of despair(my mother was an alcoholic:every 3 months she would go on a mega binge)and so I helped to create the madness around me! My dad was a rock through these episodes, he kept us all together(no wonder he had three heart attacks). Its painful returning to these times, but I must do so. I also must learn to tune my ID to produce good times! I have experimented and found that it does work! Only a small example, but it worked as Neville said it would. I imagined the scenario happening as I wanted, and felt it too, Neville says to feel/experience it happening is vital. A few days later and I knew this was for real.
How to practice mindfulness properly:
Research shows 8 weeks mindfulness practice disconnects mind from its stress centre (click)
Research shows 8 weeks mindfulness practice disconnects mind from its stress centre (click)
I agree with Lara explains higher consciousness very well, my purpose for this thread is to gauge where I am at, consistently learning and growing. We are consciousness and the reason we are here is to increase the quality of our consciousness! A course in miracles:
Introduction
1 This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.
2 This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:
Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.
Introduction
1 This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.
2 This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:
Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.
Yes, but by transcending the ego mind with its distinction between self and not self ie the ingrained, habitual belief in inherently separate beings. If we believe we are separate individuals or persons, then everyone and everything appears to be a separate self, including God. When the mind/ego itself is seen to be the problem and the cause of all afflictions, the "direct path " teachings beckon. The problems of the mind can't be solved by the mind, only by going to the deeper level of pure awareness in which there is "only one". Buddha/God is always present inside in the silence of the mind
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I jumped in right at the 'forms' and 'substance' part where he's using wood as an example, and didn't go any further, so sorry if this is covered later, but I was wondering how they would apply that concept to consciousness. I'm guessing that according to this school of thought, our sense of self or, 'me-ness' would be the ultimate, outward 'form' of our consciousness. Like the 'wood' that we see. So that's step one. What would be step two, what would be the substance of the form of 'self'?
Have not had time to watch vid yet, and I don't know if I understand you correctly, but in advaita there is only one reality and the objects of the senses are not self-existent but forms or shapes consciousness takes on ie basically ideas arising within consciousness and therefore not separate from it. The forms consciousness takes on appear to be intrinsically separate from it because the act of perception itself splits the one reality (consciousness) into observer (ego, or separate self) and observed, but both are interdependent aspects of consciousness which in reality is both subject and object.
In its contentless primal state, reached in deep concentration, sensory perception with its illusory subject-object distinction is transcended and consciousness is 'empty' of form. In its formless state there is no awareness of separate beings, just pure be-ing, which is consciousness in itself, rather than consciousness of something 'other' than it, as in perception. What appears in perception to be separate beings from it is nothing other than its own activity....the act of perception itself. There is no 'real' substance or form, only infinite awareness and the ideas arising within it.
In its contentless primal state, reached in deep concentration, sensory perception with its illusory subject-object distinction is transcended and consciousness is 'empty' of form. In its formless state there is no awareness of separate beings, just pure be-ing, which is consciousness in itself, rather than consciousness of something 'other' than it, as in perception. What appears in perception to be separate beings from it is nothing other than its own activity....the act of perception itself. There is no 'real' substance or form, only infinite awareness and the ideas arising within it.
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Yes, in nondualistic philosophies like advaita there is only one reality - duality is an illusion inherent in the act of perception which transforms consciousness from its inactive, still state to its active state. This creates the illusion of self- existent (ie independent of consciousness) separate sensory objects. These are not real in and of themselves, but only appear to be. They have no real substance because they are ideas, like the substances we see in dreams. Only consciousness really exists
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I do firmly believe that there has to be one bedrock reality (spoiler alert: this aint it). One underlying, omnipresent matrix in which all illusions are embedded. What it is, what it's called, and do we really need constant trippy music playing as we discuss it, I dunno, I'm still working on that one
But I don't get how there can be an act of perception in the inactive state. Isn't 'perception' fundamentally an active state phenomenon?
But I don't get how there can be an act of perception in the inactive state. Isn't 'perception' fundamentally an active state phenomenon?The reasoning is quite easy to follow once you get into it, but doesn't of course establish/prove the nature and relation of what we perceive to us as perceivers of it. In advaita, the emphasis is on the subject, rather than the object, and in order to know who/what we are directly we have to concentrate just on the direct knowledge of our own existence or presence, excluding any thoughts or theories about it. It's reversing the long habit of the mind of looking outwards to the world of sensory perception, but it's said that perseverance brings a flood of bliss which is the nature of consciousness in its still, primal state. I think the first step is to realize we are consciousness, and the second that consciousness is infinite, omnipresent. Not just think it, but to experience it, or be it, directly
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