Contradictions everywhere

[ocean breeze]

Its good to read things that contradict as you can gain a better understanding of different view points. And can open your mind to a diversity of ideas and concepts. It can create more confusion of what is or isn't true as you will feel influenced and pulled from different directions which just clouds the mind and limits your understanding. This is why its best to try to avoid reading things that contradict.

[blossomingtree]

I believe the question is not why are there so many contradicting accounts; rather, it is, which practice/insights/experiential reality can & will unify them all?

That, to me, is spirituality.

Originally Posted by blossomingtree

I believe the question is not why are there so many contradicting accounts; rather, it is, which practice/insights/experiential reality can & will unify them all?

That, to me, is spirituality.

The Sufis say that "All beliefs go to God," which is another 'version' of collective consciousness or the expansion of consciousness. The reason they contradict in the first place is not Spirituality but cognitive dissonance or the 'lock on, lock out' principle. Einstein said that genius is being able to hold two opposing concepts in the mind at the same time. The tendency is to put things into opposition in the first place - which the Universe itself doesn't do. What some haven't quite come to terms with is the notion that what might be true for one may not be true for someone else, but that doesn't make it a lie or contradictory. The awareness isn't in things contradicting but in the reasons our minds perceive them as such - we create the contradictions, nothing has an inherent contradiction itself.

[Busby]

Originally Posted by Greenslade

The tendency is to put things into opposition in the first place - which the Universe itself doesn't do. .

What a surprising thing to say about the universe not doing. From my POV the universe only exists because of contradictions or put another way - because of opposites. You can't have one without the other.

A pendulum, when it swings, creates a rhythm and once having swung, stops and then swings back, then it stops and swings back again. Out of quietness comes sound, out of blackness comes light. Without an opposite (of whatever) we wouldn't recognise anything.
Without life there would be no death - no death = no life.

Originally Posted by Busby

What a surprising thing to say about the universe not doing. From my POV the universe only exists because of contradictions or put another way - because of opposites. You can't have one without the other.

A pendulum, when it swings, creates a rhythm and once having swung, stops and then swings back, then it stops and swings back again. Out of quietness comes sound, out of blackness comes light. Without an opposite (of whatever) we wouldn't recognise anything.
Without life there would be no death - no death = no life.

The Universe simply allows the existence of silence or sound, blackness or light, and after that it's a choice of perspective. Quietness does not create the sound, it is not the source; darkness is not the source of light. Death is a part of Life. The Universe is a reflection of you.

[Busby]

Originally Posted by Greenslade

The Universe simply allows the existence of silence or sound, blackness or light, and after that it's a choice of perspective. Quietness does not create the sound, it is not the source; darkness is not the source of light. Death is a part of Life. The Universe is a reflection of you.

Your philosophy seems somewhat fragile to me. Something either is or isn't. This surely is the stuff of which building blocks are made - to make our conditions of existence I mean.
In my book it's exactly silence which gives rise to sound - this is the very principle of creation. Everything around us is created by opposing forces.

Originally Posted by Busby

Your philosophy seems somewhat fragile to me. Something either is or isn't. This surely is the stuff of which building blocks are made - to make our conditions of existence I mean.
In my book it's exactly silence which gives rise to sound - this is the very principle of creation. Everything around us is created by opposing forces.

I've been watching some science TEDTalks of late because my interests don't solely concentrate on Spirituality, to me there are just as if not more interesting things in the Universe than a bunch of Spiritual theories, regardless of how clever we may think they are. Sometimes they inspire me to think differently about Spirituality; for instance, in quantum mechanics existence changes when you measure it or perceive it - consciousness changes physical reality. Even in the spaces between the smallest particles of matter- inside atoms - and in the distant reaches of the Universe - what we call 'empty' space - there yet exists something. There is no such thing as empty, or a vacuum.

If silence is just our inability to perceive sound, if darkness is our inability to perceive light? Both sound and light are wavelengths of the energy that everything is, and it's that which gives rise to the creation of form. There is nothing that is not. Something does not come from nothing because nothing doesn't exist, creation isn't creation it's a reshaping of what already is.

Like your consciousness.

[Shivani Devi]

Originally Posted by Greenslade

I've been watching some science TEDTalks of late because my interests don't solely concentrate on Spirituality, to me there are just as if not more interesting things in the Universe than a bunch of Spiritual theories, regardless of how clever we may think they are. Sometimes they inspire me to think differently about Spirituality; for instance, in quantum mechanics existence changes when you measure it or perceive it - consciousness changes physical reality. Even in the spaces between the smallest particles of matter- inside atoms - and in the distant reaches of the Universe - what we call 'empty' space - there yet exists something. There is no such thing as empty, or a vacuum.

If silence is just our inability to perceive sound, if darkness is our inability to perceive light? Both sound and light are wavelengths of the energy that everything is, and it's that which gives rise to the creation of form. There is nothing that is not. Something does not come from nothing because nothing doesn't exist, creation isn't creation it's a reshaping of what already is.

Like your consciousness.

TED talks are amazing.

I've been existing on a diet of them for the past two weeks as basically everything is 'spiritual' depending upon which viewpoint you view things from.

The one that resonated with me most was 'How To Stop Screwing Yourself Over' by Mel Robbins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp7E973zozc

Mel Robbins has sorta become my 'coach' as a result of that.

From there, I went on to the Unsettled Science program, viewing lectures given by Maria Syldona on the Quantum Mechanics of Kashmir Shaivism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wXO7oKtNWA

Not a TED talk...but informative nonetheless.

[CrystalSong]

Originally Posted by Caleb

Hello everyone. First, I am new here. My name is Caleb, nice to meet you good folks. :)

I have been avidly pursuing my spiritual path for three years and change. I embarked and began consciously "seeking" after coming to a complete acknowledgment that my mother had been very emotionally abusive. I am trying to find the inner peace that I hope to have buried somewhere in there, underneath all of the psychological and physical illnesses that have plagued me.

A few paths / sources of wisdom have highly resonated with me. These include:

• Abraham-Hicks
• Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God
• A Course in Miracles

What I have a really hard time is reconciling all the contradictions I hear between sources of information/wisdom that I thought I trusted. For example, in Conversations with God, "God" speaks about the cosmos repeatedly expanding out from the Big Bang, then collapsing again and then starting a new iteration. This to me was confirmation that the "insight" I had had a few months prior, wherein I imagined that that's exactly what happens, was correct. But in Gary Renard's "The Disappearance of the Universe," which is more or less touted as a great companion text to A Course in Miracles, and contains what Renard heard from some spiritual beings "Pursah" and "Arten," they tell Renard that that doesn't happen at all. In fact, *they* say that eventually time and space will cease, that we will *stop* living physical lives and just be eternally one with God, with no reason or need to experience anything else. Abraham-Hicks says quite another thing: that the universe keeps expanding and evolving forever and ever, we just keep experiencing, and desiring, and experiencing, and growing, and desiring, etc. etc. which has always seemed like it made more sense to me.

These are just a few examples. I run into all kinds of disagreements between teachers/sources I felt like I could trust. So, who *can* I trust? If all this stuff, especially the "channeled" stuff, is supposed to be coming from "spirit" or "God" or "the universe" or "infinite intelligence," then shouldn't it *all* be correct? If I can't trust all of it, it seems to me, I can't trust any of it.

Does anyone else have experience with feeling/thinking this way? I don't know what to do. Maybe some will say it's my ego mind trying to figure it out, but in response I'd say, "Well, doesn't my ego mind have a legitimate question?"

I understand where you are coming from and hear you.
Like you I've run into many of these same seeming contradictions and my mind has wrestled with them for a while before taking it into meditation and talking with Spirit about them.
What'd I'd offer is that its most likely the rational/egoic mind is incorrect, it can only understand things in a linear way and most of what actually goes down in the Universe doesn't happen in a linear way.
The Cosmos is actually very complicated, more than the human mind can fathom and even more confusingly on some level everything is True and focusing the microscope on another setting everything is not true.
It all becomes perspective, how close or far away are we from the question? What are the parameters we want for our answer? Third dimension only? Larger Consciousness Construct answer? Big Picture answer? None of those answers will be the same, yet all will be true from their own level or perspective.
Best answers I've found yet and those which bring the most peace and comfort are the one's Spirit has personally shown me in meditation, anything else is just other talking heads opinions or my own brain trying to come up with answers out of a grab bag of opinions sin useful facts. lol

[blossomingtree]

To me, the answer is transcendence. Transcending thought, word and deed, is a start.