roger

I was thinking about something that I can vaguely remember thinking about before, about whether Christian deities and Hindu deities are actually the same entities. I believe that "Yahweh" IS "Brahma," but what about Shiva, Vishnu, Christ, and the Holy Spirit? In ACIM it says that EVERYONE is "Christ," just like Jesus was, but maybe "Christ" IS Shiva (or Vishnu). And perhaps the "Holy Spirit" IS Vishnu (or Shiva). Does anyone know the answers to these questions? I'd love to hear everyone's opinions.

Part of Krishnamurti's point, imo part of the essence of his teaching, was that "spirituality" just makes people MORE egocentric, MORE self-centered and self-absorbed. When I look at my own path, at myself, I see this. It's like MY path, MY life, MY experience, MY enlightenment, have been of supreme importance to me. Is that good?? Maybe it is, the truth is I really don't know. We have to care for and tend to our lives and paths, we should CARE about succeeding. But what about "freedom from self" and "dying to self"? Is the kind of self-concern people have good? Please share your thoughts if you have any.

This will be the last post I make on this website. I've been hurt quite a few times by unloving responses to me here. Some of you have been very kind to me and I thank each of you for that. You're all very beautiful. Peace.

I wanted to share with you guys a tweet I made today. 'Don't just do what feels good; do what you feel good ABOUT. Pleasure lasts a moment, but you have forever to remember your choices.'

I agree that the fear could be the fear of loss of ego.....I have the exact same thing. One thing that's helped me is to simply know that it's completely okay and normal. See it as part of the journey. You've recognized your fear, now USE that fear and deal with it wisely. By using it and dealing wisely with it, I mean to respond to it self-lovingly. That includes accepting it non-judgmentally, rather than judging it as bad and being hard on yourself about it. The best way to heal your fear, or any negative emotion for that matter, is probably to honor it, non-judgmentally accept it, and to let it be. It can help, whenever you're experiencing a negative emotion, to just allow yourself to experience it without trying to overcome it. Just know that what you're feeling is okay. You don't have to DO anything. Healing happens naturally that way.

Aaron, Try non-meditation: no effort, no technique. Just sit there. Don't try not to think. Just BE. Just be at peace. Let thoughts come and go on their own. Be like an animal. They don't use effort, but they're in a meditative state. It's like when you're driving your car, or laying in bed. Just let your mind be natural, be itself.

Hi Will! I've enjoyed reading your posts. WHY should I love others, care about others? Why should their welfare matter to me? I've thought a lot about this, and I've concluded that there's no way to put into words WHY I should love others. Of course, kindness and compassion are socially beneficial. Helping others effectively is good for society. But why, besides the obvious reasons of practicality and utility, should I really and truly give a damn about other people? People matter. People's happiness matters. But why should they matter to ME? I feel that love is a value, and kind of law, of its own. It is a light unto itself. You see, it's not so much that you SHOULD care about others, it's that caring is LOVE, it's that caring is good. It's GOOD to love. It's OKAY not to love, but far better is to love.

Choice implies that there's more than one option, but we always do what we're supposed to do, what we have to do. The Hindu scriptures say, 'All is as it should be.' Everything is happening perfectly. It's all the highest good. Will precedes choice. Our will determines our choices, but choice does not determine our will. Our divine nature determines our will, which is always loving, therefore every choice is loving. It's just that there's an appearance, an illusion, of attack and lack of love. Meher Baba said that we are 'God being us'. That's similar to Seth's (channeled by Jane Roberts) teaching that 'There's a deeper part of you living through you.' Our divine nature is really living our lives AS us. We're just not fully conscious of it. Joe Vitale, in Zero Limits, says that our conscious mind isn't the part of us that makes choices, it just carries them out. We're really choicelessly living our lives, doing only the universal will, because it's our own will. It can seem absurd that God actually wants things that seem so 'bad' to happen. But the divine plan is for All That Is to FULLY experience life and all good things, so all possibilities exist. There's a great glory in being human and suffering profoundly, like a soldier fighting for his country. It's done in the name of love for the sakes of all. Also, suffering is temporary, and the afterlife is pure happiness. In the meantime, we have to be strong and bear our crosses. These are my opinions and I could be mistaken, but I do have great faith in this stuff. Most of my understanding comes from 'channeled' material. I didn't come up with all this stuff on my own.

My view is that we have free will, but not choice. Everyone is always choicelessly doing their own will, BECAUSE it's their will. In other words, we can't not do our own will. That will is the universal will of all beings.

First I want to say to the administrators that if this post violates the policies of this website, because I'm using somebody's name, I sincerely apologize. People here mention names a lot, so I thought it would be okay. There was this woman I used to know, named Jessica Smyth (that's how her name was spelled, but it's pronounced the same as Smith), and she had a certain extreme tendency, which I call 'Jessica's myth'. She was the queen of 'attacking' others in the guise of self-love. The idea that attacking others can be a form of self-love is Jessica's myth. Think about it. How many times have you either been unkind to another, or had another be unkind to you, and the unkindness passed as 'self-love'? Well, fortunately, an act of love is either loving towards EVERYONE, or towards NO ONE. That's part of the nature of love - it honors everyone. You can't love yourself at the expense of another, or another at the expense of yourself. That's justice. Do YOU believe in Jessica's myth?

Hi Aaron. You're absolutely lovely man. My saying that may seem strange, but I have these spiritual perceptions of beauty that really take my breath away. Anyway, have fun here and best wishes on your path. Peace.

Thanks for sharing these links! I read about the 'Just One Look Method' and I'm excited about experimenting with it. It's really incredible that you shared that with me, because it may be the key for me to overcome my problem of the 'fear of life'. I haven't read 'Love Can Open Prison Doors' but I enjoyed reading some just now and I plan on reading more. Peace and joy to you.

Lex, in A Course in Miracles it says that what we're really afraid of is life/truth/love/God/Self, as you said John Sherman teaches. I recognize that fear in myself. ACIM also says that what seems to be the fear of death, is really the attraction to it. By 'death', it means the apparent, but not actual, loss of one's divine Self and nature. I'll use my own experience to express how I interpret this. I have this problem with staying up very late. I usually stay up till at least 5 or 6 in the morning, and often go out for breakfast before going to bed. I don't currently have a job btw. I said in the previous post that a way to see the nature of a thing is to imagine its absence. When I imagine going to bed, I see emptiness, loss, what might be called 'death'. I see loss of ego, even loss of self. What I SEEM to be fearing is 'death' - loss of self. But when I look very deeply, I see something else. I see that going to bed DOESN'T mean 'death' to me, but LIFE. I see that going to bed means having my divine nature, it means love, life, truth, and my true, divine Self. STAYING UP, on the other hand, means AVOIDING my divine nature. So basically, it's not the FEAR of 'death' that keeps me from going to bed, but the ATTRACTION to it, and the fear of life/truth/love/Self. I'll tell you what I think the solution to all this is. This could also be the solution to yours and my own problem with ego. Non-physical, channeled entities have said, 'The way to overcome your defenses is by forgiving yourself for them,' and also, 'You can change when you no longer see any need to change.' You know, these problems are completely OKAY and understandable. We are innocent, we're guilty of nothing, as everyone is. If we could just say to ourselves that 'this is just where I am right now, and that's okay, that's GOOD ENOUGH', and let healing happen naturally and joyfully, without forcing it.......that may be the key. What do we do? Have fun and enjoy our lives. Accept ourselves as we are. Let healing happen naturally, through total self-acceptance.

I admire your openness. It takes humility and courage to reveal things about oneself as honestly as you are. I deal with pride and being 'puffed up' also, and it's actually been an extreme problem for me all my life. I'm conscious that my problem (I've also had a huge anger problem all my life) comes largely from an avoidance of and a fear of my divine Self and nature. It may be that ego avoids one's divine nature because it sees it as its demise. Pride is of ego, and may be its way of defending and maintaining its existence. A way to see the nature of a thing is to imagine its absence. What if we were to abandon the thoughts and emotions that arise out of pride/ego? When I imagine that, I see what appears to me as loss. Loss of ego, loss of illusions, of that which I identify with. It's possible that there's a misunderstanding underneath the ego and the fear of losing it. Perhaps we fear a 'loss' that wouldn't actually be - an illusion of loss, an apparent, but not actual, loss. Maybe the threat of loss of ego is an empty threat. And after the healing and letting go, we'd see that there was never anything to fear in the first place.

I can definitely relate to what you're saying. The thing about being 'puffed up' is that it's very painful. It's not 'bad', it's not immoral or mean. It just robs us of peace. Pride can seem to feel so good. The truth is it's a living hell. The peace and serenity of innocence and humility are far more joyful than pride and egocentricity.

I feel that this was revealed to me by a higher power. Of course, I could be mistaken. lol First, you want others to love you for your own sake. Second, you want to love others for your own sake. Third, you want to love others for their sakes. Fourth, you want others to love you for their sakes.

Hi Lex. I've enjoyed reading your posts. I share your emphasis on love. It's the bottom line. REALLY wild some of the artists you've worked with!

Sri Chinmoy taught that there's liberation (the Zen Buddhists call it little enlightenment) and realization (big enlightenment). He says liberation always comes first. He says liberation is total freedom from ignorance. In other words, you've found the truth. In realization, you BECOME the truth, you ARE the truth. With liberation, if you were looking at a pencil, you would recognize it as divine nature, as a form of God. You might see it as utterly beautiful, you'd see its innocence, its worth. With realization, you are the pencil, you are its beauty and innocence. In liberation, you KNOW God/Tao; in realization, you ARE God/Tao. I've been thinking about this recently and I thought you all might find it interesting.

I've been sitting here thinking about this for a while, and it really depends on what you mean. In a sense, ego dissolution is impossible. Even realized beings have egos. The difference is that they have HEALTHY egos. Ego needs healing.

Sounds interesting. Something that comes to mind is that, with some herbs, the benefits may have more to do with the energetic and divine nature of them, than with the physical nature of them. There was an Indian restaurant in my town, and the owner and chef was a very spiritually powerful man, and the food he cooked was blessed and had extreme healing energy. After I ate there, I felt this freedom from fear, I felt powerful and healed of fear. It wasn't permanent, but I imagine if I ate there frequently, it could possibly have lasting effects. I can bless food and give it healing power. I've done it before and I and the others who ate it were noticeably purified and healed. It's not a special power I have - anyone can easily do it. Just say something like, 'I bless this food,' or, 'I offer love and light to this food.' Try it. It's easy and it works. I can almost guarantee you that you'll notice healing effects after you eat. My point was that it's possible that, as with offering your blessing to food you eat, it may be that certain herbs have a powerful loving or divine energy, rather than a physical composition that heals (such as milk having calcium and therefore making your bones strong).

I went on a retreat many years ago, and my roommate said that for about thirteen years he had psychotic experiences of extreme fear. He wasn't into spiritual practice during that time. One day he just said to himself that he might as well do what he could, and he started meditating several hours a day. After about five years of that, he got better. One thing about this is that he didn't meditate 15 or 20 minutes twice a day, or even an hour once a day - he spent long hours meditating for several years, and finally found healing. What do you all think about this approach? Hardcore meditation for years as a way to find healing or enlightenment? I'm sure many of you have read Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda. There's a story of a guy who meditated 8 hours every night for 8 years, and finally found enlightenment. Also, do any of you do this kind of thing? Does anybody here spend several hours or more every day meditating?

I think that God and the spirit masters see 'bad' things differently than we. Imo everything that happens is the highest good. Life is unfolding perfectly. All is as it should be. The divine plan and will is for all good things to happen. All that is desires to fully experience love, joy, and all good things. But without all 'bad' things, there couldn't be all good things. Without ignorance, there wouldn't be learning or growth; without anger, there couldn't be forgiveness; without sickness, there wouldn't be such a thing as healing. So all possibilities exist.

shaq420, Based on some of the posts here, and the things I read about him elsewhere, he definitely seems like a great healer and teacher. I feel that I can discern that, based on my own intuition and capacity. I'm sure you probably think he's the real deal also, but I guess what you were asking was whether you should take your wife to him or not. My approach whenever somebody asks this isn't to tell them what I think they should do, but to tell them my view about making decisions. The thing is that no one else can know what's right for you. Do what gives you peace. Follow guidance. One way to do this is by looking within and seeing what's ALREADY there. You may already have a strong feeling about what to do. You might either have a feeling of excitement and a sense that you definitely want to do this, or a persistent thought that there's no need to, and that it might be better to take a different approach to healing. One sign that what you're feeling is guidance is if it remains, if it's continually there and doesn't leave you. It will be a persistent feeling, like a candle flame that doesn't flicker but remains steady. If it's guidance it will stay. It will be constant and persistent. I hope this helps.

The main teaching of A Course in Miracles, which supposedly was written by Jesus, and received by a human being, is that love is all there really is, and 'attack' is only an illusion. This seems utterly ironic, but most students of ACIM don't even believe that attack is an illusion, even though that idea is the major point of the book. The idea that attack is real is so deeply enmeshed in human consciousness, seems so OBVIOUS, that most people take it entirely for granted and don't even suspect or question that it might be an illusion. Even Paramhansa Yogananda once said, 'Evil is real, just look at the world around you.' You see, it seems obvious that attack is real. The illusion is SUPPOSED to seem real - that's part of the divine plan. The perspective of non-physical, channeled entities is that everything is happening perfectly, and every choice is loving. There's only an APPEARANCE of lack of love and attack.

I've often considered meditating long hours every day, as a way to awaken. I made a post about it here asking everyone what their views about that kind of thing are. The longest I've ever sat down and meditated is three hours. But there was a thirteen month period where I meditated twenty four hours every day, without cessation, as I went throughout the day. I didn't take a single break from not deliberately thinking. In other words, even though thoughts came and went, I didn't deliberately choose to think. There's a teaching in ACIM, 'You could easily sit still an hour and accomplish nothing. Yet you could just as easily give a single instant to God and achieve total oneness with Him.' What matters is the quality of your meditation, not quantity, not how long you go for. What matters is how good the meditation is.