Quote:
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Originally Posted by FallingLeaves
effort may be pointless, but on the other hand what are ya gonna do with your time?
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Help people, serve others, do stuff to make others lives better, work to eliminate suffering in the world (and in oneself). Think about others more than you think about yourself. I think one great thing about Jesus's teachings was he emphasized these things. I think some of the self centered ideas about pursuing "spiritual greatness" came from eastern religions. Work on yourself, think about yourself, meditate and have great spiritual experiences for yourself. Me, me, me right. How do "I" get this or that spiritual thing, achieve self-centered pleasure in some form from spirituality.
I think self-centered effort is the given. I think it is the go-to state of human (body/mind identified), consciousness. To not live as the internal self-centered thought stream, that applies effort to some kind of thoughts of a my past/future time line, takes understanding, wisdom, higher awareness in the now.
I think one simple point of it is to believe or think there is "more" I can be creates a conflict in the now. If we are creating conflict in the now, though these self-centered thoughts and thinking, nothing is preventing us from God union or realization except our acceptance of ideas like these. We are creating the separation and conflict. Nothing is preventing inner and outer peace except ourselves. We are telling ourselves we are not enough, that now is not enough.
I think effort involves time. Time is needed to move from here to there, this to that. Time is an illusion as the only place we are and will ever be is now. The future is a place to look for some things. But to find the truth of self and consciousness the only place one can look is now. And in the now the question is what am I creating now to be? I think if I entertain ideas there is "more" spiritually I can get for myself, then I have created the now to be self-centered and focused, and accepted an idea I need to do something, make an effort to move from what I believe myself to be now or what I believe now is, to what I want it to be. But we are all creating what now is! One does not need to make an effort to change the now. The now changes when we realize we are the ones making it what it is.
I think there is a difference between wanting to change through effort (which needs an awareness identified with the mental mind stream as reality) to one that realizes it not what I need to do, it is what I need to stop doing (focusing on thought and self-centeredness)
I think these are 2000 year old ideas and realizations:
Matthew 16:25 For anyone who keeps his life for himself shall lose it. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.
And Miester Eckhart who said one has to live without self centeredness.
Can we stop thinking about ourselves and realize what we are instead of what we want to be? Realizing what we are, what we are doing in the now, changes what we are, and what we are doing. Ego or a self centered person cannot change itself as self centered and focused is all it can be. I think effort is the way ego attempts to change. Understanding and seeing (which is not an effort to do, it is a doing - effort involves time, looking at now requires no time) but understanding and seeing can be conceptualized or thought of as "effort" to an ego identified consciousness. Is noticing one is listening or focusing on the internal thought stream an effort? Who or what is making the effort? As soon as you add an idea of doing it as opposed to just doing it you are then focusing once again on the thought stream as self.
They put these ideas into star wars.
“Do or do not. There is no try” Yoda
To try is to introduce time. If you introduce time you add a mental idea of self. A mental idea of self always involves a consciousness that is identifying with the internal mental thought stream as me or self (in the now). It means I am focusing on ideas in the now. Time requires an idea added to now. It's not what we need to do, it is what we are doing. The doing is focusing on thought or mind. When we notice we are focusing on an idea and that this is optional, we find we have not only changed what we are, the entire experience of what now is changes. We are free and realize we were both the jailer and the prisoner. We were not the means to find freedom, we were the ones holding the door closed.
I was just responding to your answer-as-a-quote with my own answer-as-a-quote???? but honestly with the as-above-as-below thing going on I figure anything you can say spiritually has a physical analogue, and vice versa....
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