two kinds of people on the world

[seeker2011]

Which are you?

1-Have you had real personal experience that makes you certain you are not only the body/mind/emotional (many deleted negative adjectives) "thing" that parades on the surface of the Earth?

2- Or are you just 'thinking' you are? Just an intellectual agreement of some concepts offered by those of category 1?

Well, I was #2, until recently. I was driven to extreme inward madness, and had to drive deep into my unknown to start this journey. So I have no intention of putting myself up or judging anyone about anything.

These recent threads about competition and ego and suffering are making me wonder how many people actually """"know""" they are more than their bodies? Know that there is more to existence than the physical? and beyond physical, Know that they are more than body/mind/emotion all of which I consider part of the 3d experience.

Responses requested.

hi seeker, i am a number one. and when i had them, i had no idea what any of them meant. hinduism explaing a lot to me....i had an identity crisis for awhile and studied for 6 years solid on religions, philosophy, science, etc.

before the experiences, i thought all this stuff was just nonsense, now i know otherwise.

[seeker2011]

I should have mentioned that I recognize a third type of person in the world. Those who have only the conviction that they are their bodies and nothing more. Those people I dont call people, my dog has more compassion and thinking ability than they, I call them minerals, less than vegetable, less than aware, less than conscious, but without judgement as well, for they "know not what they do"

[seeker2011]

Thank you Gracie,
Exactily what I had hoped for.

I am a 1. When I as a 2, for a long time I hadn't learn about many different mystical traditions. I had the impression that this state is something that takes years of dedicated meditation to achieve for most people. But then I read some interviews with advaita and neo-advaita teachers and was trying to understand what they were talking about when they described what they call enlightenment. I liked what they were describing and understood it intellectually at first. A few days later I was describing what I understood on that level to a friend and he seemed to have a euphoric experience... After that I spent some time contemplating it while sitting in my room and it suddenly clicked and became something I felt with ecstatic certainty that everything is that oneness the teachers describe, instead of just understanding the theory that everything is one, and everything felt indescribably beautiful.

However, there are many compassionate and intelligent people who do not believe that any part of their individual selves will survive after death. And there are some people who have had experiences like this who seem to have very limited compassion. I have met people who I have sometimes suspected do not have consciousness and who seem incapable of any compassion, but a few of them repeat the teachings of eastern traditions and talk of how they are more than the body. They use whatever quotes about spirituality that will make them sound superior and special basically and use them to put people down. What determines if someone is intelligent and has compassion is whether or not they can imagine themselves in another person's shoes and genuinely care about the other person's feelings with a preference that they feel well. You don't need to believe that you are more than the body to do that.

[Miss Hepburn]

By some Grace that comes out of nowhere - I am a # 1.
I couldn't deny the Holy Spirit or
a Superior Power out of Star Trek - if I tried - could I die because of this experience - could I know that
this Superior Power or experience could uplift me to an unimaginable Spiritual Realm beyond this physical
awareness ----to an altered state? You betcha.


I know why Paul could sing while in fecal matter, chained in dungeons...oh yeah.
By Grace.

Miss Hepburn

Hey seeker2011,

I am a # 1 I have had to many weird and unexplainable things occur in my life, and have come to understand more as I have surrendered to Spirit. It has been a neat journey because the understanding and connection have helped me see how all the things we experience have a purpose, the normal and the weird. They are what makes us who we are and not like anyone else, a spiritual original. Cool stuff...

[athribiristan]

I've always called them sleepers, dreamers, and awakened. Me? I'm WIDE awake.

I regard myself as a mind-body thing that parades on the surface of the Earth. When I die, everything unique to myself perishes.

And yet... that mind-body thing is aware and has a complex psychology -- a "spirit" if you will -- and benefits from following a spiritual path. It is amazing! It is capable of great epiphanies about its nature as a mind-body thing.

There is no need to look down on people who don't dichotomize spirit and body. Some may be unenlightened people, but some may be more enlightened than you.


eudaimonia,

Mark

[Lightspirit]

I guess No1 I'm just borrowing this body for a few years. There is defiantly much more than the physical. I really suspect there there is a part of us that never dies.