The spiritual conversation is difficult, and therefore, skillful

[Raziel]

Originally Posted by Shivani Devi

Let them bring up Freud...you counter with Jung.

Then, if you really wanna drive it home, you serve up Nietzsche for dessert.

My "dark half' isn't about negative emotions or demons or anything like that. It's about exploring the subconscious, diving deep into that ocean...the veiled mysteries of life and just being totally esoteric...believing that "God' and "Satan'...'Good' and "Evil'...'Dark and Light' are two sides of the same coin and I wouldn't be a non-dualist otherwise...

Even so, like you said before...there's always a dot of white in the black and a dot of black in the white...so there is no absolutes within the nature of duality.

The snake swallowing its tail is what encircles it:



Let me know if I'm going too deep for you.

We actually totally agree on a soul level - I'm speaking in metaphors as my working class brain likes to over simplify because I know that - a Lion is a lion.

Put a flower in it's hair or have it live in your house but one day it will think - yum!

It is what it is & there is no need to fear it but you must respect it. - the same with shadow.

We are all of it - the "good" & "bad" mine just agree to a set of principles

[Shivani Devi]

Originally Posted by Raziel

We actually totally agree on a soul level - I'm speaking in metaphors as my working class brain likes to over simplify because I know that - a Lion is a lion.

Put a flower in it's hair or have it live in your house but one day it will think - yum!

It is what it is & there is no need to fear it but you must respect it. - the same with shadow.

We are all of it - the "good" & "bad" mine just agree to a set of principles

Yep, totally true. This Leo is a Leo. =)

[7luminaries]

Originally Posted by catsquotl

I'll try until my account get's deleted as requested.
I found that in my honesty There's just too much people taking offence.

My questions about the validity of the chakra's was a dreadful experience. A few asked how I viewed them, Most just got angry and wanted to know Why I wanted to kill my self in the conscious removal of them.

Helping a lightworker see that what she felt is part of a natural human experience also got me cornered into the box of trying to stifle an emerging soul..

A quick dive into the non-duality subforum had me in full mirroring sociapth, narcisistic jerk like behaviour in which I myself had to ask the moderators to clean up big time as it was just to awful to continue...

Not to mention the discussions over on the buddhist forum where everybody seems to Know what Guatama the Buddha meant. And then start disregarding the most basic sutta's as insignificant..

To me this forum seems to be for most an escape into a fantasy realm fueled by old-age stories of light and love. As soon as you get real.. Discussions ends and assumptions start to rear their ugly heads..

Continued honesty (in my humble opinion) will get someone cornered and even "removed/suspended" ahum...

So...
Apart for my enjoyment in heated debate, disagreements and internetdrama there's not much "spiritual" clarity to be found here. Or any of the forums for that matter.

It may even be just me and the way I carry myself on-line which feels off, because it couldn't possibly reflect all of me..

With Love
Eelco
(who is a big black sabbath fan and if he had to pick a favorit guitarist Tommy Iommi would come as close as they get.)

Cat, hello there...I hope you stay and I value your contribution and your honesty. I hope I haven't made you feel bad and if so, I'm sorry. I don't think our misunderstanding means anything long-term except that perhaps we know a bit more about where we're each coming from. Seriously, I don't mind at ALL that we disagree, as long as it doesn't get into the realm of personal attacks. I am completely fine with literally whatever comes out of your heart, mind, or mouth. You and anyone else. Like Hozier said, the stranger the better, really. It's all good.

Re: how your honesty has been received, it may just be that, as with anyone, a little framing is needed to get your point across without too many distractions which may (?) misdirect others or raise their hackles and get their back up.

I work on this myself and I think we all do, or most of us. And not just on the forums Biting my tongue and taking the courteous approach is IMO the better way 99% of the time, in my experience...though this doesn't mean you should have to sacrifice authenticity...it's a zen sort of art form, really.

I wasn't on any of those other threads you mention but I'm sorry you had a bad experience with them. You probably have a lot of meaningful input to contribute to this thread because of your experiences there...as you probably could reflect and think on what happened when things went south.

I thought the one about the chakras seemdd very odd, as I would have thought folks would be reassuring and kind to you, and letting you know that yes, you have these energy centres regardless (though the higher-level ones can be "quiet", or relatively non-active if not awakened or initialised).

I like what Shivani said -- including the bit on chakras. I do see the chakra energy in terms of texture, feel/emotion, and colour, etc., for diagnostic purposes. To do much more than take a look &/or gently balance would really require a more extensive level of permission, but occasionally some folks' chakras looked just awful...even "caked" together sometimes. You can clean that up but a much deeper and more extensive systemic healing web or net is required to promote the kind of deeper-level feedback and dredging that is required to sustain things long-term. Meaning, there's no shortcut and the person has to take ownership of their own healing and their own spiritual work, specifically at the level of the heart-led consciousness. Keeping it very brief, that's the only way real change takes place. And now, with regard to themselves, here's exactly where that honesty and authenticity you mention comes in...taking ownership and closing their own integrity gap.

Not certain if that's the sort of feedback you got...perhaps (perhaps) you get one sort of feedback from those who seek to know and balance their own chakras and another from those who have also worked on loads of other folks' chakras ???

Peace & blessings
7L

[7luminaries]

Jyotir, thank you for posting this - as always your contributions are wise and insightful. I've finally cleared my slate to get back to you and respond. So sorry for the delay!

Originally Posted by Jyotir

Hi Gem, 7L, God-Like,

Fyi, per the recent posts in this thread, there is a good discussion on the subject of 'knowingness', etc. in the following text. I've quoted the brief summation, after which follows a thorough elaboration in the cited chapter. On the surface it seems simpler than the Buddhist construct - 4 vs. 10 'layers' -, (which admittedly, I have not read), but it may also augment or confirm as well.

~ J

OUR SURFACE cognition, our limited and restricted mental way of looking at our self, at our inner movements and at the world outside us and its objects and happenings, is so constituted that it derives in different degrees from a fourfold order of knowledge. The original and fundamental way of knowing, native to the occult self in things, is a knowledge by identity; the second, derivative, is a knowledge by direct contact associated at its roots with a secret knowledge by identity or starting from it, but actually separated from its source and therefore powerful but incomplete in its cognition; the third is a knowledge by separation from the object of observation, but still with a direct contact as its
support or even a partial identity; the fourth is a completely separative knowledge which relies on a machinery of indirect contact, a knowledge by acquisition which is yet, without being conscious of it, a rendering or bringing up of the contents of a pre-existent inner awareness and knowledge. A knowledge by identity, a knowledge by intimate direct contact, a knowledge by separative direct contact, a wholly separative knowledge by indirect contact are the four cognitive methods of Nature.


- Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Chapter X, Knowledge by Identity
and Separative Knowledge, pg. 543

This is very interesting and immediately what came to my mind was the knowing of oneself, versus another or other sentient being(s)...as I progressed from knowing by identity all the way through to indirect knowing.

It seems to me like a distended mitosis "metaphase" diagram of sorts...we are all connected foundationally in the ground of being, but the degree of overlapping identity knowing -- or the "place" we position ourselves in relation to others -- varies from one soul to the next. Depending on what seem to be imprecise terms like soul family, soul resonance, perhaps past-life experience, and so forth.

Having more of these connections might shift our way or "position" of knowing towards the identity "pole" and a more innate knowing as direct apprehension...whereas for total strangers, the knowing is more indirect and resides more toward the "pole" of the generic, universal ground of being -- for that specific soul, relative to your own.

And thus...it is timely and appropo to this spiritual conversation, in many and various subtle ways, IMO.

This below is from my earlier "knowningness" link. It resonated deeply and was one aspect of knowningness that I ties in directly to what you say here, and I recall you've mentioned earlier as well:

https://www.diamondapproach.org/glos...es/knowingness

Knowing Through Identity

You can know your body through being intimate with it, you can know your feelings through being intimate with them, you can know your inner state by being intimate with it. Intimacy means that no barrier exists between you and whatever you are knowing. It’s a direct in-touch-ness, a direct contact. More than that, it is a mixing of your consciousness with whatever it is you’re knowing. There are no barriers, no walls, between you and what it is that you are knowing. This has been traditionally termed knowing through identity, that is, knowing by being what you know. It has also been termed gnosis (jnana in Sanskrit; yeshe in Tibetan; ma‘rifa in Arabic). For example, you know anger by being anger, by experiencing it as part of you when your awareness and consciousness pervade the experience of anger.

The nature of the soul is such that when a feeling arises, we can experience that feeling from within the feeling itself. We can intimately mix our consciousness with the specifics of our experience and recognize directly what the experience is. This is the ground of knowingness, which is direct knowing, and it is necessary in the process of understanding. Without this kind of knowingness, this gnosis, there is no possibility of real understanding; understanding remains only a mental operation, which is good for mathematics but is not enough for spiritual transformation.

Do you have any further thoughts or would you care to expound on this further? There is certainly much here and I am only just getting into this topic of knowing and knowingness, per God-Like's prior post.

For example, if we (humanity) strive toward inner and outer manifest authentic love (being and doing) and transform not only individual but also collective levels of being and consciousness...will we then tend to move our mutual "position" or mutual state of interbeing with total strangers toward identity knowing and away from the universal, generic, indirect knowing?
I would think yes but surely there is a good deal more to it...

Peace & blessings
7L

[7luminaries]

Originally Posted by Gem

I missed the link so I went back and found it, and to me it loses itself to semantics like, what is meant by 'existence'?

Then there is 'awareness' and we don;t know what it means per-se, but we each mysteriously have it. Then we talk of something which isn't abstract in the way 'existence' is.

Gem...hello there!
I get that there are a fair amount of terms that have a context in the spiritual tradition, which I may not be fully grasping either.

Still...I did resonate with the bit above on Identity Knowingness, and on Immediate Knowingness (which is listed here again for ref):

https://www.diamondapproach.org/glos...es/knowingness

Immediate Knowingness

So, the knowingness we’re talking about has to be immediate. That’s why we say you not only have to be aware, you have to be fully present. Your consciousness of what you are experiencing has to fill the entire field of your awareness. It has to feel whatever is there, without veils or filters. Whatever you are feeling—hatred, rejection, resistance, anger, happiness, spaciousness—you allow it to fill all of your awareness, so that you feel it directly and completely. And the feeling of that, the experience of whatever is arising, is inseparable from the knowingness of it—because you cannot know True Nature conceptually, through the discursive mind.

I think Jyotir may be able to add some clarifications on the term "existence" from within this or a similar tradition to this, which he follows.

Meantime, I have been patiently working through the difficulties of the spiritual discussion with as much feeble skill as I could muster

Peace & blessings
7L

[Shivani Devi]

I sort of get the feeling this thread had run its course about 40 pages ago and it's not going to see many/if any more replies. Cat is gone now, Gem has unsubscribed and isn't really on SF much now, and Jyotir only responds to threads generally and not to individuals personally I have noticed. Raziel and myself have taken to discussing Metallica and it's like a bar room scene when 'last drinks' are called....meanwhile, I want to venture further into Taoist Cosmology and need an excuse to do so, but my Higher Self is grabbing my arm and dragging me out of this thread too now.

[Raziel]

Originally Posted by Shivani Devi

I sort of get the feeling this thread had run its course about 40 pages ago and it's not going to see many/if any more replies. Cat is gone now, Gem has unsubscribed and isn't really on SF much now, and Jyotir only responds to threads generally and not to individuals personally I have noticed. Raziel and myself have taken to discussing Metallica and it's like a bar room scene when 'last drinks' are called....meanwhile, I want to venture further into Taoist Cosmology and need an excuse to do so, but my Higher Self is grabbing my arm and dragging me out of this thread too now.

The spiritual conversation is like catching a unicorn ..

Good luck with that ...

.

[Shivani Devi]

Originally Posted by Raziel

The spiritual conversation is like catching a unicorn ..

Good luck with that ...

.

What, you gotta be a virgin first?

Oh the Freudian symbolism I could go into with teenage girls and unicorns...but I'll spare you all that.

Meanwhile, I'll just go scare the pants off some Christians pretending to be Satan incarnate...I need my good laugh for the day.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by 7luminaries

Gem...hello there!
I get that there are a fair amount of terms that have a context in the spiritual tradition, which I may not be fully grasping either.

Still...I did resonate with the bit above on Identity Knowingness, and on Immediate Knowingness (which is listed here again for ref):

https://www.diamondapproach.org/glos...es/knowingness


I think Jyotir may be able to add some clarifications on the term "existence" from within this or a similar tradition to this, which he follows.

Meantime, I have been patiently working through the difficulties of the spiritual discussion with as much feeble skill as I could muster

Peace & blessings
7L

Well, we know the basic skill is mindful equanimity, and that can be the hardest of things when we endure the extremes of experience including the emotional contents which were caught up in us as traumas of the past, and the spiritual conversation keeps reminding us to return the attention to wherefrom it arises, which makes us 'pass through' all that stands in the way.

In these pages I have noted the arising of hard emotion such as annoyance and angst, and all this is a good opportunity to 'stay with it', rather than re-entering the reactive avoidance strategies which have always worked as distractions in the past.

It will continue along and those who reach the place where they can no longer confront the truth of themselves will discontinue because the turmoil starts to overwhelm the comforts we find easy. It's because the conversation requires going to a deeper level, unwrapping one layer to reveal the next, and we start letting out the Monster (references the film clips I posted earlier https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mjlM_RnsVE).

In my deep meditation, after several days of continuous persistence, I saw the 'thing' that parades as 'me', and it isn't stable. It's angry, panicky, deceptive, self-preserving at any cost. This is what in spiritual lexicon were term 'ego', and as long we are distracted, it presides as 'me' - but as long as we are consciously self-aware, it cannot take that position.

This thing I refer to as 'ego', and define quite specifically, needs to fool me into believing it is myself, so when we persist in continuing without faltering in our self awareness, the attention is turned directly to this ego, and it can not withstand our gaze. It can only 'rule the roost' if we are not watching it, under which circumstance, it operates by avoiding our conscious awareness (unconsciously). When we see the avoidance arising in ourselves, we see this thing in action, and it will try all sorts of tricks, throwing up all nature of psychological reactivity to distract us from seeing the whole illusion of ourselves.

I had heard allusions in this thread about being honest, but when I talk about being truthful I'm talking about something very deep - that ability we have to destroy the self-illusion, delusion, and expose the trickster themselves, who thereafter can never resume the position of 'me' without being caught in the act.

So it is not for me to muse on existence. There is nobody who knows the answer to that mystery, it is just that we imagine spiritual masters who know ultimate answers, but no such answers exist, so we continue the story and say the finger is pointing at the moon, as if that makes it somehow valid. It's all just nonsense created to feed the one pretending to be 'me', and all I can say is the spiritual practice is to relentlessly and unceasingly return the attention to where it arises from: oneself.

So the conversation is the ongoing reminder to turn attention back toward its origin in self-awareness. Those who claim it's easy spat the dummy and left, but the ones who really mean it will continue, and although distracted for a time, will remember and resume the truthful way - be conscious of all their own mind is doing - without blame, without justification and other sorts of self-deception - for as physicist Richard Feynman said, "The first thing is, you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool".

[naturesflow]

Originally Posted by Gem

Well, we know the basic skill is mindful equanimity, and that can be the hardest of things when we endure the extremes of experience including the emotional contents which were caught up in us as traumas of the past, and the spiritual conversation keeps reminding us to return the attention to wherefrom it arises, which makes us 'pass through' all that stands in the way.

In these pages I have noted the arising of hard emotion such as annoyance and angst, and all this is a good opportunity to 'stay with it', rather than re-entering the reactive avoidance strategies which have always worked as distractions in the past.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mjlM_RnsVE).

In my deep meditation, after several days of continuous persistence, I saw the 'thing' that parades as 'me', and it isn't stable. It's angry, panicky, deceptive, self-preserving at any cost. This is what in spiritual lexicon were term 'ego', and as long we are distracted, it presides as 'me' - but as long as we are consciously self-aware, it cannot take that position.

This thing I refer to as 'ego', and define quite specifically, needs to fool me into believing it is myself, so when we persist in continuing without faltering in our self awareness, the attention is turned directly to this ego, and it can not withstand our gaze. It can only 'rule the roost' if we are not watching it, under which circumstance, it operates by avoiding our conscious awareness (unconsciously). When we see the avoidance arising in ourselves, we see this thing in action, and it will try all sorts of tricks, throwing up all nature of psychological reactivity to distract us from seeing the whole illusion of ourselves.

I had heard allusions in this thread about being honest, but when I talk about being truthful I'm talking about something very deep - that ability we have to destroy the self-illusion, delusion, and expose the trickster themselves, who thereafter can never resume the position of 'me' without being caught in the act.

So it is not for me to muse on existence. There is nobody who knows the answer to that mystery, it is just that we imagine spiritual masters who know ultimate answers, but no such answers exist, so we continue the story and say the finger is pointing at the moon, as if that makes it somehow valid. It's all just nonsense created to feed the one pretending to be 'me', and all I can say is the spiritual practice is to relentlessly and unceasingly return the attention to where it arises from: oneself.

So the conversation is the ongoing reminder to turn attention back toward its origin in self-awareness. Those who claim it's easy spat the dummy and left, but the ones who really mean it will continue, and although distracted for a time, will remember and resume the truthful way - be conscious of all their own mind is doing - without blame, without justification and other sorts of self-deception - for as physicist Richard Feynman said, "The first thing is, you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool".

This was good reading Gem.

It becomes very difficult to engage directly with someone who is in avoidance of deeper truth within themselves, because often those markers in self will dance around themselves and point and chatter incessantly to itself as avoidance or distraction to the external being the issue so the focus and self awareness shifts itself from itself. It can be quite noticeable if you have noticed yourself doing this and understand more deeply how to both reflect on yourself in this way and reflect and build a deeper awareness of those around you in your own engagement with them. Often I recalled in myself how easily it was to move from self awareness to external reasons and reactions as to why things were not flowing and people are not able to maintain engagement with perhaps someone more open to their own deeper truth seeking to continue the relating. What you shared about being more conscious of fooling yourself, makes sense. I do remember (sometimes unaware) how easy it is to come into the realization deeper eventually, where you have been fooling yourself, I do recall myself in this way, but I often looked more directly into myself to deepen my own realizations more complete about myself. A very valuable lesson to look deeper into my own excuses and external ideas that it was about the external movements creating the problems and often not believing it was about myself.

I sometimes use those times to pull back to self and let go anyway through these kind of situations and usually can begin again more aware in myself what it all means to my own relating and how to move more conscious of myself in these ways. Plus sometimes finding new ways to relate from a deeper truth of this interaction in myself and deepen in myself through the truth I might be noticing, observing and activating myself. So it helps and supports me to be very aware of what is moving through the whole creation of those times and the reasons people show in reactions. Pausing and reflecting is a good tool of self awareness. Some see this as giving up, but in fact giving the self permission to stop making excuses about why things are as they are and more what one can do to shift themselves into a new way of engagement is a good way to be. Seeing your own patterns at play, is a wonderful source of changing the way you do things. I often wonder why people cant see their own repetitive patterns playing out with the external and not reflect and wonder about themselves in all that. I understand through my own blindness and inability to not always see and notice myself, how this can be. I suppose in this understanding of yourself, of not being able to self reflect deeper, to source that pattern and creation in self that creates it to be, we begin to understand others right where they are.