One God, One Christ, One Life, One Suffering

[Serrao]

Originally Posted by celest

Yes he could have Serrao but it doesn't sound like one of his quotes, I could be wrong of course. If you find any similar quotes give me a BIG shout please, more for me to learn

This one personally keeps me from fiery debating (B.G. 2.52):
When your intelligence has passed out of the dense forest of delusion, you shall become indifferent to all that has been heard and all that is to be heard.

It looks very much like Buddha's saying:
Each to their own.

[Serrao]

Originally Posted by Amilius777

Dualistic thinking and self-centeredness are the causes of all suffering- on an individual scale to a global scale.

If one does no harm to another, the way I see it, there is no problem with dualistic thinking and self-centeredness.
Those traits are necessary to survive and can also be positively used to develop oneself on a personal (dualistic) level.

Originally Posted by Amilius

Jesus. I almost forgot. Jesus was not only a very holy and great person to look up to, Jesus was also a highly evolved soul who opened the doors to deeper truths.

Jesus is indeed a very advanced, profound and inspiring soul.

[revolver]

You can only be who you are, forget about others and where they are, concentrate on where you are, and find who you are, and be who you are.

[Serrao]

Originally Posted by revolver

You can only be who you are, forget about others and where they are, concentrate on where you are, and find who you are, and be who you are.

Sounds like a stage where one no longer needs religion.
I believe real Masters live like this. They have their own personal belief system.

[RyanWind]

Originally Posted by Serrao

Sounds like a stage where one no longer needs religion.
I believe real Masters live like this. They have their own personal belief system.

Well the battle is in the moment. In the now. You have to respond to that, what is. That requires looking at what is, right now, in this moment. Religion and belief may be present in your mind in this moment or may not be. It will only manifest as memory or thought. Perhaps religious symbols and icons are in your environment all presenting learned concepts to your consciousness. So those are inputs to your current reality as well. But a master carries nothing around. One needs to only look at what is, one does not need anything telling them what is, a master can see for themselves.

If you are fully present, belief and religion are like dust settling on your hands. You merely blow it away and become the embodiment of what the dust represented.

[Serrao]

Originally Posted by RyanWind

Well the battle is in the moment. In the now. You have to respond to that, what is. That requires looking at what is, right now, in this moment. Religion and belief may be present in your mind in this moment or may not be. It will only manifest as memory or thought. Perhaps religious symbols and icons are in your environment all presenting learned concepts to your consciousness. So those are inputs to your current reality as well. But a master carries nothing around. One needs to only look at what is, one does not need anything telling them what is, a master can see for themselves.

If you are fully present, belief and religion are like dust settling on your hands. You merely blow it away and become the embodiment of what the dust represented.

Nice and interesting view.
It was a nice read.
Thanks.

Although, there is one thing I was thinking.
Animals are very much in the moment, don't carry belief systems and do what needs to be done right now.
Which made me think there is obviously and definitely something extra about Master than those mentioned traits.
What could that be?

[BlueSky]

Originally Posted by Serrao

Nice and interesting view.
It was a nice read.
Thanks.

Although, there is one thing I was thinking.
Animals are very much in the moment, don't carry belief systems and do what needs to be done right now.
Which made me think there is obviously and definitely something extra about Master than those mentioned traits.
What could that be?

The master is not present, the master is presence.

[RyanWind]

Originally Posted by Serrao

... there is one thing I was thinking.
Animals are very much in the moment, don't carry belief systems and do what needs to be done right now.
Which made me think there is obviously and definitely something extra about Master than those mentioned traits.
What could that be?

My cat was actually bored today. Walked around meowing wanting someone to entertain her. This is a common problem for intelligent animals in zoos as well. One local zoo tries to throw something new into the monkey cage weekly to keep them sane. Same with elephants, the zoo adds new things to keep them entertained so they don't become mentally ill like those zoo animals that pace back and forth all day. Animals really are not much different from us. They have emotions, they are slaves to their brain chemistry and conditioning. Feral cats for example, pet cats that grew up away from humans, will never bond with a human. They are conditioned to fear humans because of their childhood experiences.

Animals have souls or immortal conscious energy just like we do. So like us, they can be very evolved or less evolved. They can have had thousands of incarnations or just a few. Their conscious energy is different from ours though. It does not have the same growth potential a human soul does. Some animal souls work with humans as pets life after life and others don't. They can learn to become better companions to humans by incarnating in that role for many lives.

But yes, most animals are not slaves to their thoughts or beliefs. That's one difference. Animals do not have the elaborate conceptual capacity that humans do with our bigger and more complex brains. Intelligent animals like dolphins and the great apes do think however in their own ways. But the human brain and soul is unique so our experience of reality is unique. We have a higher intelligence and awareness and so we manipulate the environment around us and within us in huge ways. Our brains create a conceptual world of opinions and beliefs and self though which we interact with and experience the world.

Take a simple zen saying:

Sometimes I sit and think.
Sometimes I just sit.

This sounds very simplistic and ordinary. But actually, it is one of the biggest challenges a human will ever face. How can a human, who's mind is full of belief and opinion and thought, just sit? To just be with nothing else going on internally? To just sit and not be affected or influenced or conditioned by anything internal or external?

To most people, the noise and self talking in your head is you. So if I say to you, just sit, your thoughts interpret this request. Things pop into your head like, "How do I just sit?" "Why should I just sit?" "Ok, I'm sitting oh crud I'm thinking, OK how do I stop thinking?" "This is boring and stupid" and on and on. We fully identify with this talking in our heads as being us. But what is the "you" that can ignore all that talking? Well that's the real you, the conscious awareness. The only you that has ever been. Actually, thought has no awareness or consciousness. We give dead words life by mixing our awareness with it. The question, "How do I stop thinking?" is really an amazing question. It's premise is false. That you are the thinker. That you are doing the thinking. Really thought appears in your mind based on past experiences, memory, habit, external stimulus and our consciousness goes to the thoughts and gives them reality and meaning. But "we" are not the thinker. We have a brain that is the "thinker." We are the thing that observes thought or buys into it as reality's interpreter.

A master just sits or just walks and just is. They no longer identify with the wall of words streaming through their heads as them. They have thoughts, they are not thoughts. Thoughts are non-phenomenal. That is, they have no effect on their consciousness. Their center is awake in the now consciousness. Others center themselves in thought and memory etc.

Awareness is really a trait like strength. It can be weak or strong and you can make it stronger through exercising it more and more. It is also like a skill in that it takes knowledge and intelligence and insight and experience to practice it and get good at it. In fact, it can take many thousands of incarnations for a soul in a human body to transcend the conceptual mind fully. But that's what human life is for. For our conscious energy or soul to evolve into something greater. To just sit takes a lot more awareness and energy than to just sit and think. One master described the path like being in a fast moving river. The path to realization is moving against the current. The easy path is to just go with the flow pushing you deeper and deeper into unconsciousness. To get free takes energy to take those slow steps upstream towards freedom.

[wmsm]

Why is it that human beings seem to imply that they have an understanding of spirit?

You talk as if you are discussing some state of observation, which you can never observe.

Real spirit contact is done in a state of peace, where we meditate for the purpose of being spiritual. When you meditate you cannot do anything wrong...therefore you cannot harm another by speaking rude words...you cannot harm another by taking physical action against them.

This is true to the condition of spirit.

As we are involved in a life circumstance of interacting with many different Natures, we then try to do our best in the circumstance that is beneficial to everyone in the circumstance.....at times being spiritual is not as successful as we would like.

Meditation though provided evidence that even criminals and their mind/feelings and reactions changed by being conditioned to a brain state. Meditation assists us to deal with all of life challenges.

Therefore there is no discussion that is ever going to give a realization of what spirit is, because we all know we are doing the journey as a personal choice.

[Serrao]

Originally Posted by Capacity

The master is not present, the master is presence.

This statement is kind of hard to for me to grasp.
Could you explain the difference between "being present" and "being presence"?