Great article, the way it was written somehow resonated with me, I have read about and intellectually understood the concepts you present before, but this article broke through that.
I think the physicist David Bohm understood this,
He says imagination, that miracle of inner image-making, lifts humanity to new heights and possibilities. At the same time, seduces with endless opportunities for self-deception. Most fail to understand the fundamental nature of this rare capacity, fewer still distil its use in ways that negate reification, believing, and treating concepts or mental images as independent things or reality. I am a human being, embedded in nature, not a Democrat, Muslim, American, or a machine. Imagined mental images are theatre, pure play. To mistake play, the mental image, for one’s identity is the beginning of self-deception and conflict.
We do not really know how to interfere with the way the world is. The way the world actually is, is an enormously complex interrelated organism.
I also think this article ties in with what you are saying.
I like how you use "play" to describe our imaginary world. In Hinduism that world is called "Maya", which literally means "Play".
I read the article from the link. I think Christianity and other main religions made a huge mistake in the personification of god. Jesus wasn't very educated. It is extremely difficult to describe a spiritual awakening experience for any person. Our language is way to limited. Therefore people use metaphors. That's what Jesus did. Of course, there is no father in heaven. It's a metaphor. Then, a hundred years later or so, some humans wrote it down and took it literally.
I used to dance with these concepts, and at various times in my life felt very much in the flow, being carried by the river.
Other times, not so much.
But right now I'm feeling quite stuck and not in control of my own life, not at all where I want to be, caring for my elderly mother who has been deteriorating in health.
There is a sense of inevitability about it, a sense of having my life determined by outside forces - but this time it is not at all pleasant or flowing.
Why not?
Is it because I am not surrendered to the experience?
Undoubtedly - but how to get past the unvoiced scream that sits in my chest?
How to find one end of thread to begin to untangle all the complex emotions - when I don't dare to even journal it anymore?
Anyway, I will sit with these ideas a bit more, and perhaps enlightenment will come in the morning!
Welcome, once again, to the human condition, Mara :-)
You describe the reality for most people.
Your comment was so fitting to my brief moment of insight this morning. My wife is also currently struggling with the ever-changing nature of reality.
To me, you are asking precisely the right questions. Some time ago, I read in some spiritual book that the answer is already within if we ask a question. According to that sage, questions and answers always arise together. The answer is already formed somewhere in our unconscious mind. He recommended focusing on the query rather than the solution. The answer will suddenly appear by itself. And he wasn't talking about conceptual logic questions and answers. The mind can solve them.
Our souls solve more profound questions. But our minds become impatient and seek to solve a problem they are not equipped to solve.
My insight this morning belonged to that second category. I have been contemplating the dual nature of our conscious thinking and feeling for a while now. There has been this logical, intellectual understanding that the opposite of it defines everything. So we conceptualise in pairs: up vs down, love vs hate etc.
One of the biggest insides regarding that topic was the understanding that a fish, living in the deep ocean all its life, doesn't know what air or land is. That's obvious. But the fish also doesn't know what water is.
Similarly, we only know what duality is once we experience a non-dual state which is the same as an egoless state.
My insight this morning was sudden and came from nowhere. It was more like a felt experience and acceptance than an intellectual understanding. I suddenly understood the dualistic nature of our experience on a much deeper level. It was like "a penny dropped". It was like: "Of course." It was accompanied by total acceptance and joy.
There is no other way to experience joy, love, bliss, and ecstasy but through experiencing despair, hate, depression and sadness. And the intensity of the despair, hate, depression and sadness I surrender to is directly proportionate to the joy, love, bliss and ecstasy.
As I said, intellectually, this was already known for some time. But this morning was a moment of total acceptance, which took all the resistance away to experience those so-called negative and suffering emotions. It was a beautiful moment.
Will it last? I doubt it. My egoic mind will not surrender so quickly and will regroup. It will come back with dozens of significant (although illogical) reasons that there must be a way to live my life to mostly experience "positive" emotions only. It will again convince me that I must be doing something wrong. It even will tell me that once I reach "enlightenment", those negative emotions will be gone for good.
And so I seemingly struggle on. But the struggle is self-imposed, self-created. Intellectually, I already know that. Today I got a little glimpse of living that thought. It's definitely worth pursuing.
However, I can't pursue it. That's the next illusion. More and more, I feel it is all down to grace, and what I do or don't do, what I think or don't think, has nothing to do with it.
Which can be a very depressing thought for the egoic mind. On the other side, isn't not caring about what my mind thinks and feels at the core of all spiritual practice?
Harking back to my comment on your previous post, words are not really adequate to express these concepts - but I think it is still very important to try. Not least because communicating as best we can helps us, both in the formulation of the thoughts and then hearing these ideas from someone else, expressed in a different way. Though words are inadequate, they still mediate the first stages of contemplation... then if you are blessed by grace, you may go beyond!
Maybe you can't exactly pursue this - but if you ignore it, it is unlikely to be repeated.
So once again we have a paradox - and that is my best effort to express something that is by its nature inexpressible... the finger pointing to the moon... that state that all the enlightened Masters are trying to show us.
Thank you for sharing those glimpses - I need the reminder to keep paying attention!
I also found the section where you explore how, "Conceptual thinking is a map like tool. It is not an authentic experience. When we think, we leave the reality of experience. We don’t see and feel the world as it is anymore when we think conceptually." fascinating having just read Iain McGlichrist
Where he says, "Earlier I suggested that we have developed language not for communication, not even for thinking, but to enable a certain type of functional manipulation of the world. Language is like the general’s map in his HQ, a representation of the world. It is no longer present, but literally ‘re-presented’ after the fact. What it delivers is a useful fiction."
He goes on to say, "I believe the essential difference between the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere is that the right hemisphere pays attention to the Other, whatever it is that exists apart from ourselves, with which it sees itself in profound relation. It is deeply attracted to, and given life by, the relationship, the betweenness, that exists with this Other. By contrast, the left hemisphere pays attention to the virtual world that it has created, which is self-consistent, but self-contained, ultimately disconnected from the Other, making it powerful – but also curiously impotent, because it is ultimately only able to operate on, and to know, itself."
Great article, the way it was written somehow resonated with me, I have read about and intellectually understood the concepts you present before, but this article broke through that.
I think the physicist David Bohm understood this,
He says imagination, that miracle of inner image-making, lifts humanity to new heights and possibilities. At the same time, seduces with endless opportunities for self-deception. Most fail to understand the fundamental nature of this rare capacity, fewer still distil its use in ways that negate reification, believing, and treating concepts or mental images as independent things or reality. I am a human being, embedded in nature, not a Democrat, Muslim, American, or a machine. Imagined mental images are theatre, pure play. To mistake play, the mental image, for one’s identity is the beginning of self-deception and conflict.
We do not really know how to interfere with the way the world is. The way the world actually is, is an enormously complex interrelated organism.
I also think this article ties in with what you are saying.
https://steve-patterson.com/understanding-god-as-nature-or-the-universe/
I like how you use "play" to describe our imaginary world. In Hinduism that world is called "Maya", which literally means "Play".
I read the article from the link. I think Christianity and other main religions made a huge mistake in the personification of god. Jesus wasn't very educated. It is extremely difficult to describe a spiritual awakening experience for any person. Our language is way to limited. Therefore people use metaphors. That's what Jesus did. Of course, there is no father in heaven. It's a metaphor. Then, a hundred years later or so, some humans wrote it down and took it literally.
I'm enjoying this series - thank you!
I used to dance with these concepts, and at various times in my life felt very much in the flow, being carried by the river.
Other times, not so much.
But right now I'm feeling quite stuck and not in control of my own life, not at all where I want to be, caring for my elderly mother who has been deteriorating in health.
There is a sense of inevitability about it, a sense of having my life determined by outside forces - but this time it is not at all pleasant or flowing.
Why not?
Is it because I am not surrendered to the experience?
Undoubtedly - but how to get past the unvoiced scream that sits in my chest?
How to find one end of thread to begin to untangle all the complex emotions - when I don't dare to even journal it anymore?
Anyway, I will sit with these ideas a bit more, and perhaps enlightenment will come in the morning!
Welcome, once again, to the human condition, Mara :-)
You describe the reality for most people.
Your comment was so fitting to my brief moment of insight this morning. My wife is also currently struggling with the ever-changing nature of reality.
To me, you are asking precisely the right questions. Some time ago, I read in some spiritual book that the answer is already within if we ask a question. According to that sage, questions and answers always arise together. The answer is already formed somewhere in our unconscious mind. He recommended focusing on the query rather than the solution. The answer will suddenly appear by itself. And he wasn't talking about conceptual logic questions and answers. The mind can solve them.
Our souls solve more profound questions. But our minds become impatient and seek to solve a problem they are not equipped to solve.
My insight this morning belonged to that second category. I have been contemplating the dual nature of our conscious thinking and feeling for a while now. There has been this logical, intellectual understanding that the opposite of it defines everything. So we conceptualise in pairs: up vs down, love vs hate etc.
One of the biggest insides regarding that topic was the understanding that a fish, living in the deep ocean all its life, doesn't know what air or land is. That's obvious. But the fish also doesn't know what water is.
Similarly, we only know what duality is once we experience a non-dual state which is the same as an egoless state.
My insight this morning was sudden and came from nowhere. It was more like a felt experience and acceptance than an intellectual understanding. I suddenly understood the dualistic nature of our experience on a much deeper level. It was like "a penny dropped". It was like: "Of course." It was accompanied by total acceptance and joy.
There is no other way to experience joy, love, bliss, and ecstasy but through experiencing despair, hate, depression and sadness. And the intensity of the despair, hate, depression and sadness I surrender to is directly proportionate to the joy, love, bliss and ecstasy.
As I said, intellectually, this was already known for some time. But this morning was a moment of total acceptance, which took all the resistance away to experience those so-called negative and suffering emotions. It was a beautiful moment.
Will it last? I doubt it. My egoic mind will not surrender so quickly and will regroup. It will come back with dozens of significant (although illogical) reasons that there must be a way to live my life to mostly experience "positive" emotions only. It will again convince me that I must be doing something wrong. It even will tell me that once I reach "enlightenment", those negative emotions will be gone for good.
And so I seemingly struggle on. But the struggle is self-imposed, self-created. Intellectually, I already know that. Today I got a little glimpse of living that thought. It's definitely worth pursuing.
However, I can't pursue it. That's the next illusion. More and more, I feel it is all down to grace, and what I do or don't do, what I think or don't think, has nothing to do with it.
Which can be a very depressing thought for the egoic mind. On the other side, isn't not caring about what my mind thinks and feels at the core of all spiritual practice?
You've expressed it all so very well!
Harking back to my comment on your previous post, words are not really adequate to express these concepts - but I think it is still very important to try. Not least because communicating as best we can helps us, both in the formulation of the thoughts and then hearing these ideas from someone else, expressed in a different way. Though words are inadequate, they still mediate the first stages of contemplation... then if you are blessed by grace, you may go beyond!
Maybe you can't exactly pursue this - but if you ignore it, it is unlikely to be repeated.
So once again we have a paradox - and that is my best effort to express something that is by its nature inexpressible... the finger pointing to the moon... that state that all the enlightened Masters are trying to show us.
Thank you for sharing those glimpses - I need the reminder to keep paying attention!
Breathe In, Breathe Out.
Breathe Out, God Hides.
Breathe In, Self Finds
Bliss!
ah! must exhale again! It's the waves of the sea. Not whether the waves are in, or out, or violent or perfect - but how you surf them.
@Ma Mu you have fun people here!
I also found the section where you explore how, "Conceptual thinking is a map like tool. It is not an authentic experience. When we think, we leave the reality of experience. We don’t see and feel the world as it is anymore when we think conceptually." fascinating having just read Iain McGlichrist
https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/default-source/members/sigs/spirituality-spsig/iain-mcgilchrist-can-the-divided-brain-tell-us-anything-about-the-ultimate-nature-of-reality.pdf?sfvrsn=a1e381e1_2
Where he says, "Earlier I suggested that we have developed language not for communication, not even for thinking, but to enable a certain type of functional manipulation of the world. Language is like the general’s map in his HQ, a representation of the world. It is no longer present, but literally ‘re-presented’ after the fact. What it delivers is a useful fiction."
He goes on to say, "I believe the essential difference between the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere is that the right hemisphere pays attention to the Other, whatever it is that exists apart from ourselves, with which it sees itself in profound relation. It is deeply attracted to, and given life by, the relationship, the betweenness, that exists with this Other. By contrast, the left hemisphere pays attention to the virtual world that it has created, which is self-consistent, but self-contained, ultimately disconnected from the Other, making it powerful – but also curiously impotent, because it is ultimately only able to operate on, and to know, itself."
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7rRvZSMNWig
:-)
The gem in the crown of the trilogy! Thank you, I need to Remember.