'just be at peace'

[lemex]

Originally Posted by happy soul

We've all heard the teaching 'just be', and maybe 'just be aware'. I've been contemplating the idea 'just be at peace' for a while.

It seems pretty easy to do, UNLESS you're upset in some way. Eckhart Tolle says that 'peace is our essential nature'. It can therefore be natural and effortless to just be at peace.

The teaching to 'rest in peace' is similar, and is definitely not merely a prayer for the dead, but an important approach to life and to one's moment to moment experience.

Here's the problem. WE LIKE DRAMA, CONFLICT, AND PROBLEMS.

U.G. Krishnamurti says that we love problems, and if we don't have one, we'll CREATE one.

It's like (and this may not apply to everyone, but it does to most people) we don't really, really and truly, WANT to be at peace.

If we can see this in ourselves, if we can recognize how we don't really want peace, maybe we can overcome it. If we practice the teaching to 'just be at peace', our tendency to AVOID peace will reveal itself, and then we can deal with that tendency - we can let it go.

We have to be willing.

Drama, conflict, problems are very low energy and harm us so I don't understand when people say this. Usually a person feels bad in such states. One must know the process. Who is this "We". Part of the problem is the "We". People strive for balance (peace, comfort, balance, normalcy) through actions, and one suddenly realizes actions in achieving balance can be both positive or negative. Sometime a matter of achieving balance and there is actually no avoidance. Should people be aware of barriers. There is a lot of conflict between Me and them, "We" is them. There is far too much personal interaction and competing wants and desires others impose. Iow is it possible such things as drama (events) are thrust on us.

[lemex]

Originally Posted by Lorelyen

Have to contest that, a view borne by western philosophy that tends to view the self in isolation as a kind of ideal state which in this discussion turns out to be inappropriate or nonsensical. The brain acts in response to an environment, not just the self who owns it.

?? I don't know. |We create and form our own reality energy. If I think and feel differently as I seem to am I not isolated. If one changes the environment does one change themselves?

Originally Posted by lemex

?? I don't know. |We create and form our own reality energy. If I think and feel differently as I seem to am I not isolated. If one changes the environment does one change themselves?

If one regards facing a different environment as embracing new experience(s) then yes but it's 'passive voice' - one is changed. Unless it's possible not to react to a new environment so inhibit new experiences.

My physiology has it that every person/ environment I encounter is a new experience; even returning to a former environment in which experience may be expanded. All will be stored in memory as a context and event so will thus be drawn on when required to meet a new, relevant situation.

♥

[naturesflow]

[quote]

Originally Posted by Lorelyen

The DL?

Dalai Lama Lorelyen.

This is the problem with many similar thinkers – Mr (or is it Mrs) Hicks is the same and cynical as it may sound it seems to be resolving as a repository of spiritual platitudes. For the depressed and worldly weary it makes them feel better but it also raises false hopes, not only reinforcing people's feelings of their current un-optimal state but about what could be if they followed a doctrine.... that may not be workable in their circumstances, which could raise problems of despair if they have no control over their circumstances. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with aiming for peace. What a lovely world it would be if everyone took the same drug at the same time.

I guess through the nature of our own journey and process, based upon this life and our personal experiences Lorelyen, sometimes people connect to aspects of life we might not fully understand, simply because we are not in that space to understand it fully as they perceive and see it. In my view peace is an attainable end point, as part of my true nature, only because I witness my unfolding through process as to what moves in me on the surface and deeper. Peace seems to always arise through that conscious walk I take. (mind you I am an avid self healer type so I move things deep in myself knowing I can end things more complete and change my reality more complete in this way) When other people tell me they feel that peace in me as I walk through life and meet and connect to them, it offers me a realization and reflection, that I am not imagining what I experience and feel at the deepest level of myself and share most freely with life around me. And often its not something every now and then, but more often something that people feel most often in me. It makes sense because I have allowed myself to open up to that in myself through process to know its real.

Last night I happened upon a passage from a book on neurophysiology representing fairly up to date research. It'll bear repeat here in context.

I will be back to follow up on your next paragraph. I am off to work. See you later on x

[happy soul]

Thanks for your replies everyone.

You're very 'hard', Lorelyen. Open your heart. Find out what love is. It matters.

Originally Posted by naturesflow

I will be back to follow up on your next paragraph. I am off to work. See you later on x

Look forward to it if you have time. And thank you for the DL definition and of course, your viewpoints elsewhere in the post which I honestly appreciate. I too see peace as attainable as the "end" of my spiritual quest here on this material earth but I think there's still a way to go to achieve it.

Originally Posted by happy soul

Thanks for your replies everyone.

You're very 'hard', Lorelyen. Open your heart. Find out what love is. It matters.

Am I really so hard? It would take a pretty long post to put forth the "why" behind my viewpoint but trying to sum it up in two sentences - I've seen many names come and go on this forum which I fear is their search for instant answers among New Age outpourings leading to disappointment so they've given up - I may be wrong, I hope so. Sentence 2: As neuroscience progresses it seems to provide (or be leading to) some answers that lie behind various "spirituality" ideas on the forum.

Whether those answers are usable in our spiritual development seems worth considering as they are more demonstrable than some of the supposition and speculation being put forth as 'teachings' on the web and elsewhere. That's just my view though. It's a subject that snared me at school, weird as it may sound (but I've always been a freak!) and recent ideas here prompted me to try to catch up. But I'm just a dilettante treading close to deep waters really. I could be very wrong. So I try to keep an open mind.

Tolle does serve a purpose as people have said here. If with his style he prompts people to find their paths (which means they'll feel better about themselves) all to the good but I wanted to express a view that some may experience a backlash. There are swindlers out there who demonstrate that they don't believe what they're pushing others to believe.

We try to do our best!

♥

Originally Posted by Lorelyen

My physiology has it that every person/ environment I encounter is a new experience; even returning to a former environment in which experience may be expanded. All will be stored in memory as a context and event so will thus be drawn on when required to meet a new, relevant situation.
♥

Yes, the trick is however to only draw on those memories if it's absolutely necessary. More often than not the mind will substitute/overlay the memory over the "new" experience as something it has experienced before. Which makes the new experience more like the old than it is in reality.

With Love
Eelco

Originally Posted by Lorelyen

Have to contest that, a view borne by western philosophy that tends to view the self in isolation as a kind of ideal state which in this discussion turns out to be inappropriate or nonsensical. The brain acts in response to an environment, not just the self who owns it.

Any stimulus from any aspect of the environment is acted upon before the nature of that stimulus reaches the conscious mind (that takes between 100 and 300ms). It's no different from the tendency of all organisms. It 'asks' "should I approach or should I avoid as it's dangerous?" some time before it gets to the veiled and buried stuff.

If peace were "our essential nature" the reaction would invariably be fronted by withdrawal since it would take deliberation in conscious awareness about the degree of avoidance necessary. Or the brain would initially treat all as peaceful and decide on the validity of the decision later (if the organism is still alive to check). Or the person would exist in isolation unreactive to anything of the environment.

The brain simply doesn't go out there looking for peace. Its first action is to keep you safe. The world isn't peaceful and the brain is fully aware of that without our conscious awareness.

So...if you can come up with better factual evidence of your position I'll stand corrected.

I somehow thought I wouldn't get a reply. I didn't throw that up as a challenge but a point for discussion.

A little disappointing, still....

♥

Originally Posted by Eelco

Yes, the trick is however to only draw on those memories if it's absolutely necessary. More often than not the mind will substitute/overlay the memory over the "new" experience as something it has experienced before. Which makes the new experience more like the old than it is in reality.

With Love
Eelco

From what we seem to know, whatever from experience is drawn on depends on the encounter. We won't have anything to analyse and decide on until the material is in conscious awareness.

(on the technical side: a stimulus (from any/all senses) hits the amygdala (the fear detector!) and thalamus that directs it to the relevant cortices - they call it "like a relay-station". The cingulate, insula, temporal and occipital lobes process internal and external information and combine it with past experience. It's fed forward to the prefrontal and parietal lobes for analysis, decision and action. It's the orbital medial prefrontal cortex that brings conscious awareness to allow what you claim.

Ok, it's just a little more complex than that. The basal forebrain system comprises these bits and pieces with others like the hippocampus (memory formation and recall) and hypothalamus (various emotional reactions) - basically the limbic system - most developed early in life before the big cortices and are the bits that handle our emotions, all close together, all reaching in various ways all over the brain.)

But I'd better shut up here. Don't want this post relegated to the "science and spirituality" section! as I'm leaning toward a view that emotion is part of the uncomfortable bridge between the physiological and spiritual.

And if anyone thinks I've got it wrong please feel free to correct me.
Ta!

♥

[BlueSky]

Originally Posted by happy soul

We've all heard the teaching 'just be', and maybe 'just be aware'. I've been contemplating the idea 'just be at peace' for a while.

It seems pretty easy to do, UNLESS you're upset in some way. Eckhart Tolle says that 'peace is our essential nature'. It can therefore be natural and effortless to just be at peace.

The teaching to 'rest in peace' is similar, and is definitely not merely a prayer for the dead, but an important approach to life and to one's moment to moment experience.

Here's the problem. WE LIKE DRAMA, CONFLICT, AND PROBLEMS.

U.G. Krishnamurti says that we love problems, and if we don't have one, we'll CREATE one.

It's like (and this may not apply to everyone, but it does to most people) we don't really, really and truly, WANT to be at peace.

If we can see this in ourselves, if we can recognize how we don't really want peace, maybe we can overcome it. If we practice the teaching to 'just be at peace', our tendency to AVOID peace will reveal itself, and then we can deal with that tendency - we can let it go.

We have to be willing.

Surely some people like drama but there are deep rooted personal reasons behind that.
Personally I really really like life as my mind has created it and with that comes an aversion to what might lie beyond that, be it peace or whatever.
For me, I am at peace with my life but I'm not at peace with being at peace with it. This may be because I'm conditioned to believe there is more or because I sense there is more.
I work on this daily by practicing renunciation but I am doomed to fail if I tell myself that it is peace or anything else for that matter that is what will be revealed.
I have to let go.
That's my 2 cents for what it's worth.