Are we separate or one?

[Maisy]

Look at the definition of the word "Identity"

i·den·ti·ty
noun
1.
the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.

Being who or what we are?
Who or what are we? Are we this body, this person, this identity?

What if we see through our body identification?
What if we see through our thoughts and mind?
What if we no longer identify with anything from the past?
Be here brand new, looking with fresh eyes?

Not looking as an identity, like male, female, straight, gay, young, old, failure, successful, poor, rich... letting go of all of that... one life stuff, after thousands of other life's in different roles and identities...

If one was free of all of that, do we still have an identity?

I think yes from my experience. The thinker is not the thought.
I am not a description, a label, a word, a body, a role, a job, an activity...
I have never been any of those things. I am a witness and perceiver of those things..

But none define me or point to me.

So what could ever change me? Enlightenment? Liberation? Being face to face with God? Merging with the source?

Nothing will ever change me in my opinion. Nothing will ever change my identity. The truth of what I actually am. I am the alpha and omega. My experience changes for sure, what I am perceiving and feeling and witnessing. But I am the one, and only one, I am I. I am the identifier not the thing I am identifying with. So what I am identifying with can change a billion ways, I can identify with nothing at all, but then that too is an experience and I am the experiencer.

So to me the question if identity remains in enlightenment makes no sense. The one that experiences enlightenment is the one that experiences delusion and attachment and fear and all the rest. There is no other one. I will always know myself and that is my identity.

People do get all caught up in body and role and belief identification and that is probably the cause of the confusion. Logic may say if I abandon all of that I will have no identity. But I think one would find nothing actually changes. One still feels the same. Identity does not change or go away or become different. Because the core of everyone is just one thing, the seer, the perceiver is our only identity. If I believed in ghosts, then I suddenly did not, there would be zero change to my identity. It was only a change in what I was identifying with. Drop everything and identity or who I am or know myself to me does not change. How I act, what I do, what I experience, how I experience may completely change, but I know myself to be the same me I always was.

[hazada guess]

Your Soul learns lessons through each lifetime,(Do you remember who you were or what you did through all your lifetimes?)
See, this is what you are doing, imagining that this person ATM is and always has been the same I.
This is where people get caught up, souls mature and change through each incarnation, past life experiences subconsciously determine how we navigate each life.
Eventually,(Through many, many incarnations), we will get it all right and merge back with God/Source in pure awareness.

Jeez,this forum is addictive, I wasn't going to post again.

[Maisy]

Originally Posted by hazada guess

IMO,we all came from the source and we are all learning lessons, aiding others etc through every vibration until we
eventually rejoin the Source.

I'm not sure we ever un-joined the source. I think we may be joined now. But we are down in the lower physical realms working with these lower energies, being meshed up in the lower stuff. We are distracted I think. Lacking in the awareness to exist in the higher realms.

It's kind of a weird idea but what if when souls are made, the attribute of awareness is limited in a way. Undeveloped. It needs experience. Because apparently we can't start at the highest eh. We have to work our way up it seems. Learning discernment.

[inavalan]

Originally Posted by Redchic12

INVALAN

YOU STATE………”The way I understand reality, growing is about getting deeper, perceiving finer and finer details ad infinitum, and not about muddling the details. It is about the developing, multiplying, perfecting identities, and not about the loss of identity”

Actually I have to disagree as I DONT see it as a loss of identity.

Not sure what you mean ... Are you saying that "all is one" doesn't mean "loss of identity"?

I wrote "growing is ... not about the loss of identity".

"All is one" implies loss of identity. I don't subscribe to "all is one".

https://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/s...7&postcount=21
"we are interconnected identities, on widely different levels of evolvement. This means that we are't "one" (we are infinitely many identities), but also that we aren't "separated" (we are all interconnected at consciousness level, and not only as humans)."

I explained to make sure that I stated it clearly. It's fine if you disagree with that.

[inavalan]

Originally Posted by Redchic12

INVALAN you state ...

I am not against using analogies.

My previous post was about using simplistic analogies, that mislead into believing something that isn't so.
https://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/s...4&postcount=12

That is the case with the ocean and the drop, the ocean and the wave, ... used for the purpose of convincing pupils, people of ideas that the speaker has, and which aren't truth, but just beliefs.

[hazada guess]

True Maisy(post#33),we are all a part of God/source working our way home.

(IMO).

[charly233]

Originally Posted by inavalan

"All is one" implies loss of identity. I don't subscribe to "all is one".

This is very interesting. But for me all is one does not necessarily imply loss of identity. Maybe we are unique and individual and interconnected aspects of the One.

The fingers do not lose their identity as individual fingers on account of being part of the hand. Likewise the self does not lose any of its individuality on account of being part of the One.

The notion that all is one is a pointer that indicates that all is God or all is source consciousness. As a pointer it is there to be realized experientially not just understood intellectually.

For me the idea of the One or God or Source points towards a universal essence that we can relate to as a being beyond our individual selves. I feel that the universe loves me and cares for me and that it is a consciousness that I can relate to. I feel that ultimately I am this being and that my integrety as an individual being is enhanced though this connection.

There is a passage in one of the gnostic gospels I think it is where Jesus said that Man is eternal and predates all of creation. This seems to suggest that the One is the archetypal man or woman. It seems to be a matter of belief. Maybe if you believe that identifying with the all that is compromises your individual identity then the universe reflects this view. If, on the other hand, you feel that the realization that all is one enhances individualty then this is true for you.

[Maisy]

I think it is above what we can understand but I think we are like "atoms of awareness" and "God" is the totality of what all of our atoms make. As we increase in awareness in ourselves as "atoms of the whole" the awareness of the whole or God or the source increases and that is why God makes new atoms of awareness or new souls.

I think of it this way. Why would such an advanced being such as God make new souls or new particles of conscious awareness? What would be the point? To watch us forget where our glasses are when they are on our heads? The energy expended to create a universe is no small thing nor to create a human being, the brain alone does billions of calculations a minute. Why make such a complex biological super computer that watches tv all day?

There has to be something vastly important about us to the source to justify it all. Something in us the source wants. I think it's obvious. The source has reached a certain level of awareness and it want's more. So it creates, sub-divides, like cells in our own body, creates new cells of awareness, or consciousness, and sends it out to experience life after life, in each life it grows in awareness and so the source becomes aware of more.

It's like adding memory chips to a computer. The more memory the more it is, does, knows. Is capable of. I think God craves to know more as all conscious life does. To expand. I think that's why we exist.

I think we all are one, linked up atoms of conscious awareness that grow in awareness. But a principle a conscious awareness is it knows itself. Thus I think will always have an identity. But then in my theory God is an identity. Hmmm. Well could be two things. Awareness, which can be shared like a power supply or batteries, and the "holder" of the awareness or power, the soul. All of us feeding God or the source. It is totally too advanced for us to understand it all I think. We can make guesses though.

[charly233]

Originally Posted by Maisy

I think it is above what we can understand.

It is totally too advanced for us to understand it all I think. We can make guesses though.

Yes I agree all of this is beyond what we can understand intellectually.

It is fun to make guesses based on our experiences and realizations.

[inavalan]

Originally Posted by charly233

...
The fingers do not lose their identity as individual fingers on account of being part of the hand. ...

You see, that's why I wrote about analogies ... :)

There is a fundamental difference between groupings of elements, and gestalts.

The body, as physical manifestation of a multi-dimensional personality, is a gestalt of consciousness.

A hand, a finger, a tissue are groupings of elements. They don't have identity.

It is likely that we use different definitions of some words.