To engage the world or withdraw from it?

[Maisy]

To engage the world or withdraw from it?

I try to be very selective in what I engage with.

[Redchic12]

Starman….” This is my experience. The problem with the world is that ego is running wild, humble ego and engage in spiritual surrender, and everything changes.”

Yes I have also found this to be true.

JustBe….” Balance is my true nature so I balance myself with what is. Sometimes I withdraw and sometimes I engage.

Same here Maisy.

[Maisy]

One of my friends is trying to make it in music. But such a big ego will not listen to anybody else for suggestions that may help. Will not listen to any suggestions about how to make their songs better. Ego's can so box people in, within their own thoughts and mind. Then people who think things about you that are simply untrue. Yet there seems to be no way to change their minds. They again are stuck within their own thoughts and beliefs and nothing seems able to shake or change that.

That's one thing the world is I think. Relationships or interactions, encounters with other people. Relationships with friends and family. These things can be so strained, so filled with misunderstandings and false assertions and beliefs. Yesterday I was at the grocery store and some woman was road raging with somebody else in the parking lot and screaming threats of violence from her car window. At the check out, the checker was obviously upset at her manager who had told her to say the "lines" they are required to say... "Did you find everything you needed?" "Thanks for shopping at such and such..." "Have a nice day" She was upset she was chewed out for not saying those lines. So she said them to me forced and mad and angry while she rattled them off.

Engaging with the world could be said to be about engaging with other people. One thing one can notice is how closed minded some are, how reactionary and opinionated and self centered and self righteous. Really some are just walking around ready to explode in anger at the slightest thing. Driving angry too. I live in a big city and have to drive in traffic on crowded freeways etc. Not a drive happens without experiencing crazy aggression from other drivers. Riding on your bumper if you are not going fast enough for them or if you are leaving space between you and the car in front of you. Honking their horns. Speeding around you, then cutting in front of you and slamming on their breaks and flipping you off. Huge trucks passing you with an inch between them and you...so you slam on your breaks to avoid them hitting you.

The "world" is a pretty funny thing to engage with when you think of it. Then our own minds as well. Pushing us to think about bad things in the past or what we desire, want, or need. Instead of just being content with what we are and have. How can we not engage? Well find a way to be that is peaceful and calm and without any conflict. Then just observe the non-sense from that place when we are out interacting with and experiencing others. Others may be stuck in their own minds and experiencing those limits but we don't have to. We can just allow it all to be how it is and not care! Remain in our inner peace.

If somebody walks up to me and offers some strong opinion about something I don't have to engage that ego. I can just nod my head in agreement! "Uh huh!" Someone rattling off gossip about somebody else. Just say "oh" and "wow" and notice how stressed they are allowing themselves to be while stuck in their minds and the "story" they are repeating emotionally. Isn't it amazing how something "bad" can happen to someone where they get hurt or angry and instead of letting it go, it's over, forget about it, they repeat it over and over with everyone they know reliving the emotions of anger over and over. Trying to get others mad about what happened to them. One could just as easily remember something good that happened to them and tell that story. But some may be addicted to strong negative emotions and spend a lot of time there mentally.

[HITESH SHAH]

Originally Posted by Honza

It is true that there is God in the world, but in my experience not a lot (or not enough), there is far more ego in the world than God. God lies mainly beyond the world or above it.

God stays out the the way IMO. He waits for us to reach Him rather than blast His way through all the ego to reach us.

God is omni-present , omni-potent and omni-scient . So to think that petty ego of petty people in the world can vanquish God and can banish him out of the world is an injustice to God . He runs and empowers 8 billion dreams day in day out but His frame of mind may not exactly be the same as we think.

While efforts are definitely required on part of seeker to seek God , God's grace too is required . Descending grade God reciprocates the ascending efforts and intensity of the seeker.

While I dont prescribe anything specifically for you , all i can request is you do it with love and without carrying bad experience of other's ego.

[Starman]

It’s wonderful to have a big heart but not wonderful at all to have a big head. Some people just live in their head, and the world, that is human civilization, validates logic and reasoning, even if it is faulty logic and reasoning, over intuition.

Just about everybody thinks what they are doing is logical; a murderer, a rapist, they have reasons for what they do, faulty reasoning but still it is logical to them. I believe sound and valid logic and reasoning has its place but most things are better off, in my opinion, being guided by intuition.

Intuition requires sublimation of ego.

[FallingLeaves]

Originally Posted by Maisy

These things can be so strained, so filled with misunderstandings and false assertions and beliefs.

at some point i stopped and thought, is it really a nice thing, to expect others to see me in some perfect way that I want to be seen? Isn't that just looking for the support of others, before I can be who I am? And putting requirements on who they are allowed to be and what they are allowed to do, just to please my own vanity? Can such behavior ever be a nice thing for them? Or even as nice for me as I originally supposed?

the other thing that came to mind is, so many seem to have so much they want to say, but it is like those of us who can listen don't want to hear it for whatever reason. We don't want it, or we want to ignore it so we'll feel better about ourselves, or we want to hear something else entirely, or we think the social desirability is too low, etc... and so we won't let what could be said it actually touch us....

sometimes though it seems like the best thing for me and those around me is, to let what will be said be said... and not be afraid of all the bad things that will happen if i also let it touch me...

thank you for what you said the other day....

[Native spirit]

Post 15 by Starman Absolutely Agree



Namaste

[FallingLeaves]

Originally Posted by Starman

I believe sound and valid logic and reasoning has its place but most things are better off, in my opinion, being guided by intuition.

while that may be somewhat true... I think a bigger problem I have even with hypothesis like that is I want to turn life into a math equation when I make a desire either way, so I know what I will get when I do what I want to do.

It crossed my mind there is not much freedom in treating life as a bunch of equations that absolutely have to come to fruition. I understand that we all do it to a greater or lesser extent but still, I don't see that there is much real freedom in it.

[Native spirit]

I have a friend we met when we were 17 I was Shy she was very confident
and I mean confident,

She decided she wanted to go into nursing she got in but she used to argue with the sister and the doctors
she always knew better,

But she could not pass the medical as she has Meiners Disease
but according to her they were wrong she lived in her own world half the time


Namaste

[Starman]

I have stumbled through life worst than Forrest Gump, and most of the time my stumbles revealed a surprising reward. I have accomplished a lot in my life by tripping over my own feet. Life is not neat and clean and orderly, although we might like it to be that way. The world was screwed up when I arrived and it will be screwed up when I leave.

When I was a little kid my mother would say “eat all the food on your plate, don’t you know there are children in China starving.” That was back in the 1950’s. Today its something else that is referenced about the struggles people are going through in this world. I worked in the helping profession 42-years and I don’t know if I made a dent.

I have learned that you do your best, whatever you can do, put it out there and then let go of it. Don’t think about what good it has done or is anyone listening. Just put your best out there, let go of it, and don’t expect anything in return. As Khalil Gibran has said, “there are those who give with joy and joy is their reward.” It does not have to be an either or situation.