Satan Doesn't Exist

Originally Posted by Joe Mc

Yep i can relate to the tinkering with methodologies and modes of meditation but I definitely sense that Wisdom came knocking on your door at some point of your journey, excellent stuff !

More like a 2x4 upside the head, at least initially. LOL!

It knocked skepticism of the paranormal right out of my head and would be considered only a minor Siddhi - precognition. It was truly disturbing.

[Joe Mc]

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

More like a 2x4 upside the head, at least initially. LOL! It knocked skepticism of the paranormal right out of my head and would be considered only a minor Siddhi - precognition. It was truly disturbing.

yep Totally relate to that !!! I had some paranormal stuff happen and I'm not really sure I have ever found a conclusive answer as to why it happened ?
Not sure we are meant to find a rational explanation for why the paranormal intervenes into our ordinary lives. Interesting subject because I remember asking
a non duality teacher about the stuff that happened to me and i got the feeling they didn't know what i was on about What do you think when this type of stuff happens ?
is a side effect of meditation and the spiritual path ..have to say i don't experience the same of kind of stuff happening now as im a bit older but i can read people's minds
pretty quickly if i want to i recon

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Originally Posted by Joe Mc

Useful way of seeing. The Archetypes which I read about years ago and forgotten about are representations of reality's paradigms, of humanity's mandalas.

And when you start understanding that, Duality and non-Duality take on a very different light.

There are two kinds of ignorance. The first is nescience, which basically means not having had access to the knowledge/information in the first place. The other is the intentional ignorance that we all know and love. Then there's Satan, king of the Underworld where angels and Spiritual people fear to tread - AKA the unconscious.

Originally Posted by Joe Mc

I too had a similiar experience and had an NDE/OBE which was absolutely overwhelmingly beautiful and true and sometimes I would find myself trying to match that experience to the spiritual teachings on offer and none of them seeed to resonate fully at all lol hmmm

You won't, not really. The Limbic System is also known as the lizard brain, and one if its 'jobs' is survival. So when someone completely trashes one of your posts and you want to punch their lights out, the lizard brain has kicked in and flooded your system with adrenaline. Information contrary to your paradigm can be seen as a threat.

It also happens in situations that induce severe emotional trauma or physical pain, and an NDE/OBE is pretty traumatic. The ego 'collapses' into the self for protection and/or creates a reality that is more 'acceptable'.

This is one of the reasons I have clear demarcation lines between Spirituality and psychology, because sometimes 'Spiritual experiences' are only 'Spiritual' because people want to think of them as such. I could argue that 'non-Dual experiences' are the same. If you don't know what isn't Spiritual any old not-Spiritual can become Spiritual.

Originally Posted by Joe Mc

What do you think when this type of stuff happens ?
is a side effect of meditation and the spiritual path ..have to say i don't experience the same of kind of stuff happening now as im a bit older but i can read people's minds
pretty quickly if i want to i recon

Definitely a byproduct of meditation. Patanjali mentions them in his Yoga Sutras.

Meditation is extremely powerful. It's like the ocean and to be respected. It's a purposeful exercise in rewiring the brain. It can just as easily reinforce or even create detrimental impressions so I'm very particular and follow technique.

[Joe Mc]

Originally Posted by Greenslade

And when you start understanding that, Duality and non-Duality take on a very different light.

There are two kinds of ignorance. The first is nescience, which basically means not having had access to the knowledge/information in the first place. The other is the intentional ignorance that we all know and love.

Interesting to categorise ignorance that way does it come from some strand of Hinduism ?

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[Joe Mc]

Originally Posted by Greenslade

You won't, not really. The Limbic System is also known as the lizard brain, and one if its 'jobs' is survival.

Thanks for sharing, yes that is useful to know too because we hear the word conditioning used alot as a generic term to describe habitual response based
upon lots of factors such as envirnoment family etc. but what you speak about there, the lizard brain or Limbic System, seems to point to a reason as to why
often a spiritual experience can be accompanied by a closing down directly as a response following on. Yeah it's the conditioning people will say which is true
but our hardwiring for survival is also saying something through the limbic system ?

It would be hard to have a fuller taste of happiness than the one I had in the NDE/OBE and yet there was other correspondents such as the Limbic System
or even only the limbic system which were saying you're not going any where Buddy and getting me ready for survival ? Thanks.

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[Joe Mc]

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

Definitely a byproduct of meditation. Patanjali mentions them in his Yoga Sutras.Meditation is extremely powerful. It's like the ocean and to be respected.

Thanks for the reminder. Yes it can get messy in terms of changing your lifestyle to a certain extent to come into line with a meditation practice.
People say the practice won't work if you are not being somewhat ethical etc. But the emphasis being on not working but as you say its not that it won't work
but i see were it could also be dangerous.

A couple of nice things have happened in the last couple of days, if i wasn't meditating i would probably think ah great but because i am meditating the things
that have happened seem very synchronistic and great ! Meditation and spiritual work can seem quite miraculous in that regard.

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[Joe Mc]

Originally Posted by movingalways

Are you familiar with the teachings of the three bardos of Tibetan Buddhism, the painful bardo of dying, the luminous bardo of dharmata, and the karmic bardo of becoming?

Yes I am somewhat familiar with the 3 Bardos. I probably have a copy of Living and Dying somewhere and have dipped into it a bit, I have also been to one of Sogyal Rimpoche's Teachings. I would approach the Bardos through the terminology of the 3 Bodies or 3 Kayas, Dharmakaya, Sambogakaya and Nirmanakaya which I read about early on through a book by Kalu Rimpoche. But it might be interesting to find some material in Sogyal Rimpoche's book and see how they correspond with the 3 Kayas.

Anyway in passing thought the NDE/OBE that I experienced seem to a somewhat coherent and narrative structure at least at the beginning and as the experience became stronger it turned to an almost impersonal Love which was at once impersonal and supra personal all at the same time The love aspect you hear about in these experiences ..happiness or love beyond imagining and words but there was a really unbelievable aspect of 'Being Known' ...every atom of me was known, so i refer to the biblical saying ...every hair of your head is counted. So the experience contained those two thins ...Love and Being Known fully.

The reason why I relate my experience is because my ideas of the Bardos gleaned from Tibetan Buddhist Literature etc. has always been of Buddhas everywhere, Demons everywhere, trying to make it through something etc. through the Bardo etc. ..Goes to show i haven't studied it too well The details of my experience seemed different in a way. No Rimpoches or Lamas came to greet me, not even monks why would they i suppose i am no Stephen Segal but that is another story. But I was greeted initially by a younger brother of mine who had passed away 10 years before that. After that i was taken up into a force field. Words can't describe that. But it was what it was, i have also thought oh that is a healing dream etc. etc. etc. and it is that too. But that is the problem with OBE/NDEs they contain everything which is new and very hard to describe. :) Thanks i didn't mean to bore you with that tale ..what do you think ?

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Originally Posted by Joe Mc

Interesting to categorise ignorance that way does it come from sound strand of Hinduism ?

In what way?