Is Spirituality Spiritual?

18 Guests, 0 Users

My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared. ~ PJ Plauger

Advanced search

Dilber MulticolorMarley TPSMF Default Theme -

[henry]

i get so astonished at the heartmind intelligence here

[Denis]

In the grips of visions from a south American vine, , I often have experiences of what appears to be past lives and an oft recurring theme is that of native American Indians both north and south and of the first interactions with Europeans.

For all it's worth I will say that it was shown to me once that the way that whites have treated those they have colonized was pretty much the same way they treated each other, ruthlessly. As a group/race, they stuck together pretty much along national lines but within the group they were barbaric to those without nobility or rank. Torture, starvation, abuses of every kind were perpetrated routinely on the masses and when they came in contact with a new group or race, these became the new lower cast and the abundant venom was poured into the new lowlier group. It seems from the visions that these behaviors were not so much directed at other races as a weapon as much as it was the way that business had been conducted from within for a long time.

I think we all today still suffer from the behavioral patterns of the past and we still treat the "other" just below the lowliest among our own. Part of the healing will be to recognize the negative way we engage social hierarchy and more how we relate to the inner hierarchy.

I think...maybe.

[Jana]

The Borg is the culture of oppressive and depressive control. This saccharine power-over culture is numb thus it can continue on its destructive campaign with only a vague dread of consequences. The Borg gains its power from external sources (status, money, position, possessions, certificates of appropriate indoctrination from universities etc...). With a hardened heart the Borg cannot palpate "inner value" via heart-intelligence and so is not aware of the full range and subtly of the human experience. Thus spiritual value is subsumed to the bestial (survival reptilian brain)...and humanity becomes indistinguishable from a bunch of delinquent baboons.
Part of the problem is that culture enforces such a limited range of consciousness and outlaws certain things like "sacramental plant substances" which could help to integrate the full psyche and free the individual from the bog of the Borg.

[jimtzu]

Since the Borg gains its power from external sources (status, money, position, possessions, certificates of appropriate programming from universities etc...)

the men behind to curtain, controlling the Borg's societal mechanisms...  could it be? 

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=497251819335380093

[marianthi]

Hello Heartmind, from my very own computer screen again.  No more borrowed screens for furtive glimpses at your views, thoughts, wisdom, truths, as was the case during my recent travels. Communication lives on.  Hi Jana, MichaelD, Denis (good to have you back!), Suttrosse Henry (as in he-who-speaks-through-sutras), Jimtzu and Robin, present in this thread.

Neitzsche, like the rest of us who wrote endless words, said that words of ´truth´ can´t reach what´s beyond them.  This ´beyond´ he called ¨ the Dionysian cauldron of seething excitement, a sea of energy in which our ego is a mere island¨.    THAT, from another angle, I presume is what Jung  (as quoted by Jana)  sees as a blessed god and  anchor: ´´the inner, transcendent experience which alone can protect him (man, woman) from the otherwise inevitable submersion in the mass." (the Borgs?).   

And in his own way, when Wilhelm Reich wanted our life force unblocked, he wanted THAT as opposed to the creature featured at the end of the post.
 
Of course, just read through our stuff here and see us still up for ultimate ´truths´ or what Richard Rorty (in his article of a few posts above) called ´the final secret´ the one that will dissolve all leashes.   Norman O. Brown in his book, ´Love´s Body´ asked:
´Is there such a thing as health? To heal is to make whole, as in wholesome, to make one again, to unify or reunify: this is eros in action.  Eros is the instinct that makes for union (as affirmed by KW and many wise ancestors) or unification¨.    He then jumps from the idea of health to the idea of freedom saying that ´Freedom is instability, the destruction of attachments, the ropes, the fixures, fixations, that tie us down  (leashes again)…Admit the void, accept loss for ever…(void is) an opening for us to leave the place where we belong, a road into the wilderness, for exodus, exile, (to)…be at home nowhere´´.   
In my experience ´at home nowhere´ is the twin of ´at home everywhere´. Lose all external ´homes´ and the inner one is left.   What can true home be if not the life coursing through us, the creative/sustaining/destructive force that makes us, brakes us, wills-us through Borg´dom and the rest?   Steven, in some other thread here addressed this home as nothing fixed (how could it be?) but as a continuous process happening each moment and, with that delicious flavour all of his own he said:  Such a moment is not for those who need much control over, or security from, the occasionally furious wash of ravaging integration around them. But if the perceiver knows that inner security and control are the only kind there are, who knows that external coherence and integration are probably best seen as projections from within, then such a moment is the perspective of choice; one is reconciled to the ride, comfortable in the heat, set for any event, and could give a rat´s ass if anything different is taught in the schools.
Talking to him recently over morning coffee (he brews it very strong) I admitted that I don´t care about truth anymore. It can be contracting, depending on who gives it and who receives it. It can be a leash.  Bliss-bunny-dom is not in my cards either.  The moment of sipping that hot strong coffee and bathing the senses in beholding the brewer: IS. 

Neitzsche, eat your heart out.  That´s where things are with me now.  Great to be back, people.

Hugs,

Marianthi.

[Denis]

Hi Marianthi and thank you.

"Of course, just read through our stuff here and see us still up for ultimate ´truths´ or what Richard Rorty (in his article of a few posts above) called ´the final secret´ the one that will dissolve all leashes."

I think I am pretty comfortable in resting in what "is", in releasing my grip on meaning making for short periods but I am very curious about where the need for dissolving final secrets comes from. What is it in us that strives for these final truths.
More than arguing for what becomes evident to one through the course of living, cherishing and releasing, I would wish to be able to see the object that casts this shadow or illusion of truth seeking.

Curiosity and inquisitiveness play their part. Pattern recognition does it's thing and from there I make  my merry way across experience. To create meaning, I relate the recognized patterns to one another and create spatial relationships between them. So far I don't have any longing for redemption so where does it come in and where does it come from.

I keep asking this because I wonder if this longing might perhaps be a strange attractor. The beyond reaching back to us to be recognized and our interpretation of it being longing to discover. I have heard this argument made before but could not give credit to the author or put it in it's proper historical perspective. Anyone care to pick this up from here to enlighten me a bit?

d.

[Jana]

Hi Marianthi,
"I admitted that I don´t care about truth anymore."


Yea the Real is so much larger than any truth. Only the rational mind that wants to possess knowledge or truth as through it were a material object cannot see the vaster sea of infinite consciousness beyond. Truth is changing by the second depending on the information, mood, circumstance.

If I told people my writing process and how I get precognitive seeding dreams which preempt the line of thought I am to journey on and are synchronous with the unfolding of events in time to cooordinate my work...most would think me stark raving bonkers. For me, there is nothing more exciting than following the thread of the transconscious thru the layers of consciousness and happenstance...to "cook" consciousness. To grow it like a tree.


6/30/07
This morning I had a strange dream of a narcissistic and addicted culture, with skydiving with huge express mail envelopes as wings as the only form of reliable excitement. I flew down from the tall, tall spindly palm trees and down to a closeup view of rock pools on the beach. I walked into a tourist pioneer town something you would find on the coast of the Mississippi come Florida, inhabited by strange obese Mexican indigenous-like people. A women runs past me in a frenzy—she has eating bottles of drugs and her family was chasing after her to try and control her. Then a guy with sandy brown hair said "Chicago welcomes you." So I wake up and go to my computer and find a guy from Chicago had just sent me an email inquiring about my business idea. Weird huh, I love this psychic precog stuff.

8/5/07 That was quite a dream, first it took me to Fiji, land of the best silicon rich drinking water in the world where I found that life actually began "around" the template of silicon...probably in silica rich rock pools.
Then I went onto grapes to look at resveratrol and the main cause of aging...iron and copper rusting agents causing oxidation in the mitochondria of cells.
From there I found acai berries the highest phytochemically rich fruit on the planet which grows on amazonian PALM trees very much like the ones in my dream...and the product of acai berries is processed and shipped fast (express mail envelopes)...to America…Modern man is becoming insane due to heavy metal damage, oxidation and inflammation, due to a cooked, high fat-carbo laden diet and phytochemical deprivation...which causes obesity, diabetes, heart disease, ADD and all manner of metabolic, mental-social breakdown.

Dream revealation complete.
Oh and the guy in Chigago was a "chemist" entrepreneur

[jimtzu]

 So far I don't have any longing for redemption so where does it come in and where does it come from.

I keep asking this because I wonder if this longing might perhaps be a strange attractor. The beyond reaching back to us to be recognized and our interpretation of it being longing to discover.

hi denis, i was wondering where this repeated question of redemption comes from?  is it a feeling of seperateness or just a feeling in general?  do you feel it as a cultural/humanity need or maybe personal filtered thru a wide lens?

[Jana]

Redemption...that is reclaiming the universal self from the abuses, stigmas, powertrips, seductions, manipulations and original sin of society at large.
ie: self love!

[jimtzu]

could it be that the redemptive call is only the ego's desire to stop the questioning in order to feel in total control? disguised in theories of everything, wrapped up in the illusion that something is lacking in the world while looking straight at it. smelling the rose while dreaming of lilacs.....

[Jana]

Yes exactly the avoidance of wholeness is what keeps people pimping after teachers, therapists and other distractions.

[henry]

another interesting month at new dimensions. coroline myss, ervin laszlo, and two interviews with some dude named ken wilber. this represents kind of a policy change for ken. i've been listening for 30+ years, and can't remember a previous wilber interview there or similar locations. for those of you good at reading tea leaves, both interviews are being conducted by craig hamilton rather than michael toms ..henry

[Michael]

Yes that is rather surprising to see Ken slumming like that... 

I know Craig Hamilton was or is connected with WIE magazine...wasn't he the one who quit the Andrew Cohen cult in a flurry of accusations?  If so, that could be a really interesting interview between him and KW...

[marianthi]

Hello Denis, 

You said: So far I don't have any longing for redemption so where does it come in and where does it come from.

I keep asking this because I wonder if this longing might perhaps be a strange attractor. The beyond reaching back to us to be recognized and our interpretation of it being longing to discover. I have heard this argument made before but could not give credit to the author or put it in it's proper historical perspective.

I only dare report in answer that no-one seems to have it - as far as I know - except two disciplines that I´m familiar with which state vaguely that all humans come with it built-in but that it takes us some time to  awaken to it.  Both assure that once awakened we´re miserable till we fulfil it.  That´s what they say, anyway. One, as you probably know, is yoga and calls it ´mumushutva´or longing for god.  The other one is Sufism and calls it the ´Longing for the Beloved´- God again (does He have to be he?). Fortunately, both disciplines cry out like the Sufi Jami in his poetry:

¨Neighbour and associate and companion:  everything is He….by God, everything is He.¨

Another Sufi (Vaughan-Lee) states what they all believe,  that when this longing/attraction is fulfilled it gives The Beloved the joy of seeing his own face in our recognition of Him, much like what you mentioned. 

Releasing the grip, as you call it, sounds fine to me and is close to my heart too.  A surrender to my own Life - is what I call it.  Mind you, there is many a moment when I revert to mad, gripping wilfulness… I do remember though that in times when my health was very poor, my energy much diminished, surrender was almost the only choise – and at times blissful even in the middle of pain and devastation. 

I´m reminded here of the Greek myth where Ariadne is abandoned to die in a solitary island, having lost everything (no less by her darling Theseus, whom she had run off with after helping him kill the Minotaur) and she lies down in bleak solitude to receive her dire fate, Dionysus disguised as a black cloud suddenly swoops down and engulfs her into his ecstasy, declaring in the process that she was actually His since ever… Some say that this legend reminds the soul of its innate fusion with divine ecstasy that must be reclaimed.

I like legends.  So many interpretations are left open. 

Agreed, Jana, the real is so much larger than any truth.  Your dreams sure keep you busy!

Hugs,

Marianthi.

[Denis]

I am happy to read you all.
I went to the island to pick my daughter up from the airport yesterday. I am complete with both children in this house for a while...I wish you could have met them Marianthi and Steven. They are truly striking in their presence, maybe on your next trip here...

Marianthi, you are pointing in the direction I was looking and so both of us stand before Mu.

"Another Sufi (Vaughan-Lee) states what they all believe,  that when this longing/attraction is fulfilled it gives The Beloved the joy of seeing his own face in our recognition of Him, much like what you mentioned."

Thank you for this, as you know I had this realization during a visionary experience(whatever that is) and I am happy to read that it has resonated elsewhere before me.

This conversation begins to sound like the afternoon one we had sipping Ouzo and rejoicing in each others being.

Speaking of dreams, I woke this morning to the strangest dream event of my life, nested dreams.
I don't think I have the flowey energy to make the experience into word but I can share with you that I very much live my interior life the way you described Jana. This time there was a very strange feel to this dream...event...I was dreaming and woke up, began to analyze the dream only to find that that was a dream too and then again and again to the point where I got to about six or eight times removed or layers of dreams within dreams. At near the last nested dream or last layer, I began to give up the effort of reaching waking reality and decided that I was in an infinity of nested dreams and that is the point at which I awoke and truly, it took me some moments to believe in terra ferma again.

I wonder if any of you have had similar experiences or know of any meaning to this type of dreaming. It certainly feels...important or momentous or something. I have been a little out of sorts or feeling out of synch all day.

Big love,

d.