Your experiences.

[BigJohn]

Originally Posted by JustBe

Many spiritual seekers, define themselves through experiences that are ‘out of this world’. Those experiences often in some way, hit home in a more profound or extraordinary way. I’ve had my own. I have integrated them in myself to understand myself and life around me. The experiences affected me greatly, but one of the most profound moments was when it all settled into ‘just being’. Where it all became a point of realising, it was up to me to live my life as all this ‘aware’ as all this as my life experience, not held up by spiritual experiences but by life itself. Live and be the integration of all those experiences. Letting it all go, to let life support me as ‘I am’.

Experiences (profound or otherwise) are simply guides to know more, see more, understand yourself as more. Understand and see more of how life is and can be. ‘Source’ the person/being you are through them. Of course many confuse their direct experience as something, ‘outside of themselves’ yet through the integration of ones life, those experiences become a part of you. In accessing the experience, you access a piece of the whole, to open you to your ‘wholeness’. By wholeness I mean a ‘feeling’ of ‘completeness’. Where you mend the pieces in conflict, where you let go of what doesn’t fit anymore or build an expansion/awareness of life differently. build a contentment with yourself and with life.

As a seeker, my experiences are numerous, but at some point if my own process, I realized they were simply the ‘bells and whistles’ ‘creative stage’ to bring me home to myself.they were important but not as important as the ‘becoming’. The real work is the ‘shattering’ of your skewed views of yourself, it’s breaking down and through everything contained inside you. Its the games and battles you play with yourself. It’s the closed mind and ‘I’m not going to change’ face you present to the world. It’s facing fears, deep dark terrors, addictions and avoidance. It’s heartbreak and projections from others unresolved in themselves. It’s opening up trauma and feelings you suppress and hide behind. This is the real work. This and more.

Life deals is big blows, hardship and struggles. This is the nature of suffering to understand how to not suffer. The spiritual experiences lend themselves to give you hope, give you strength, show you more, show you to keep going, to show you,there is always more.

The gift of spiritual intervention builds a greater view in us, to remind us who we really are. To remind you as you are who you can be, become and live as.

Holding on to your experiences and never bringing that aliveness as yourself, that completeness, contentment of yourself as that experience, means you miss those vital links it’s showing you, you can have as yourself.

It’s never easy to face yourself, but if you don’t you miss, how to live an easier life, a supported life, a spiritually connected, open to life, life. This deep acceptance removes doubt, changes your reality, opens the doorway to a co supportive life.

We are life, we exist and we hold the mirror, you seek inside.

For me, I suspect there is much more for me to experience. My experience 'round' me out more. That is just me. I know, some will disagree, so be it.

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

Starman can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is what he's speaking to. I copied the URL at the appropriate point but feel free to watch it from the beginning for context.

https://youtu.be/XRmeL7UqE_g?list=PL...qIb4O F&t=324

Wow. I never knew you could insert a Youtube link from a certain point in time.

You tech genius you!

[Starman]

Originally Posted by Lorelyen

I honestly can't see how experience can be so compartmentalised. One experiences something and assimilates it possibly through interpretation but the interpretation is still the experience as it gets embedded and organised in our brains. I'm talking about experiential stuff here, the conversion of signs into what we act upon as reality, not, "oh, that was a nice experience" level, if you see what I mean.
.

In my opinion our experiences are not compartmentalized, rather it is our beliefs about our experiences that may be compartmentalized. We compartmental some experiences as physical, others as spiritual, and still others as mental, etc., etc.

Experience is universal beliefs or interpretations are not. Individuals have variations in their interpretations of the same experience. Often our interpretation of experience is based on the language we use, our culture, etc. There are words in English that can not be translated into other languages. They just don’t have a word for them.

Experience without interpretation, or belief, would be the same for everyone. Some might say that effect without affect amounts to neurological dysfunction, but there are yogis who can sleep on a bed of nails and remove themselves from feeling anything, or a person who can walk on hot coals, etc., and interpret that experience just as they might interpret walking down a street.

Our interpretations of experience are compartmentalized, and they determine not what we experience but how we experience. There are experiences that a person may have that they don’t even know they are having. How many people who meditate say that they experience nothing in meditation, and a lot of those people will stop meditating because they say they did not have any experience of meditation.

[BigJohn]

Originally Posted by Starman

In my opinion our experiences are not compartmentalized, rather it is our beliefs about our experiences that may be compartmentalized. We compartmental some experiences as physical, others as spiritual, and still others as mental, etc., etc.

Experience is universal beliefs or interpretations are not. Individuals have variations in their interpretations of the same experience. Often our interpretation of experience is based on the language we use, our culture, etc. There are words in English that can not be translated into other languages. They just don’t have a word for them.

Experience without interpretation, or belief, would be the same for everyone. Some might say that effect without affect amounts to neurological dysfunction, but there are yogis who can sleep on a bed of nails and remove themselves from feeling anything, or a person who can walk on hot coals, etc., and interpret that experience just as they might interpret walking down a street.

Our interpretations of experience are compartmentalized, and they determine not what we experience but how we experience. There are experiences that a person may have that they don’t even know they are having. How many people who meditate say that they experience nothing in meditation, and a lot of those people will stop meditating because they say they did not have any experience of meditation.

I have walked on hot coals.....
sleeping on a bed of nails is an experience in of it self.

One I was thinking about today is driving a car blind folded. I have been able to 'see' with a blind fold on but never took it to the next level.

Originally Posted by Starman

In my opinion our experiences are not compartmentalized, rather it is our beliefs about our experiences that may be compartmentalized. We compartmental some experiences as physical, others as spiritual, and still others as mental, etc., etc.

I see your point of view but I'm not one for categorising these things anyway. As a gnostic it's all spirit so there's no point. Even so, categorising them probably doesn't make a difference to the base experience itself. It happens. It's a continuing process and (opinion here, I haven't sussed the physiology) that will colour the assimilation of subsequent similar experiences. Where your view may stand is any decision-making process about learning that arises from a decision. That may in turn modify the connections in the earlier assimilation process.

Experience is universal beliefs or interpretations are not.

Pardon me but that didn't make sense.

Individuals have variations in their interpretations of the same experience. Often our interpretation of experience is based on the language we use, our culture, etc. There are words in English that can not be translated into other languages. They just don’t have a word for them.

True enough.

Experience without interpretation, or belief, would be the same for everyone. Some might say that effect without affect amounts to neurological dysfunction, but there are yogis who can sleep on a bed of nails and remove themselves from feeling anything, or a person who can walk on hot coals, etc., and interpret that experience just as they might interpret walking down a street.

Again true and obvious really - a series of stimuli that constitute an experience will be interpreted by the individual dependent on possibly a huge number of criteria, not the least their relationship to similar stimuli (or 'signs' as this semioticist chooses to call them).

Our interpretations of experience are compartmentalized, and they determine not what we experience but how we experience. There are experiences that a person may have that they don’t even know they are having. How many people who meditate say that they experience nothing in meditation, and a lot of those people will stop meditating because they say they did not have any experience of meditation.

For you possibly, not me. Previous experiences are there and will be called upon when a variant, a similar, or the same thing is experienced. When tasked with something to do I don't even momentarily ponder what category I should draw experience from to meet the immediate; it just emerges so I can synthesise a plan (of sorts).

Interesting though. Thanks for your reply.
.

[JustBe]

Originally Posted by BigJohn

For me, I suspect there is much more for me to experience. My experience 'round' me out more. That is just me. I know, some will disagree, so be it.

Round you out/round you in.

I suppose in my use of the term experiences I was referring more to spiritual experiences and the self realisation process in those. As for other life experiences, I think most of those support our aliveness too.

I’m not sure why people would disagree with your view.