DreamBliss

I did cycle away as planned, and was gone for a few weeks. I made it to Parkdale, WA., then realized I was done. Or at least that is what I tell myself. Maybe I did just give up. But I remember a sort of feeling that I had done whatever it was I had set out to do, although I do not know specifically what that was. So I haven't made it to California - yet. You have posted a reasonable counter-theory to what I have proposed and I will accept it for now. The simplest solution is sometimes the best. But I feel that you are resistant to all outside-physical phenomena or solutions. That is the sense I get - how you come across to me. In essence if you can't see, taste, hear, touch, smell or measure it in some way it doesn't exist for you. I can't recall much from our earlier conversations of your particular mindset. So if I have this wrong I apologize. It is just what I feel or sense coming from you. You may be correct that I have to be more grounded - get my hands dirty and collect research instead of pursuing wild theories. But you are forgetting something I think... Hundreds of years ago, when a man decided he wanted to get a good look at the stars and the moon, and he could create a device that would allow him to do so, I am sure many of his peers responded to his aspirations the same way you have responded to me. Yet Galileo went on to make a telescope. Nikola Tesla thought of wireless energy, Edison thought of the light bulb. Somewhere along the line someone thought they could create a craft that would take men into space. Imagine how this idea came across to people in Victorian times when Jules Verne wrote From The Earth To The Moon! All wild theories and fantastical ideas are the forerunners of new discoveries. All the science I presume you adhere too has been developed on this sort of foundation. Men looking beyond what is known, what is perceivable using the five senses, and bringing back from the ether an idea that, later, concreteized into reality. Your five sense only know and understand a fraction of the world around you, and even of that fraction you know only a tiny little bit. If you have never lived in the Amazon you have no experience of all the things there, and the same if you have never lived in the Arctic. All the things you know, that you are certain about, that you have experience with, that, in your mind are proven facts, are still subjective to your experience. Someone else with the same material may see the same things completely differently. I am sure you know all of this already Nungali. So do yourself, me and the rest of us a favor and don't laugh when someone says that sound could create a portal to another world, or be used to make a physical object lighter and more malleable. You have no way of knowing that you are 100% correct. You have no way of knowing the technologies and methods that ancient civilizations used hundreds, thousands or ten thousand years ago. In fact, unless you are an archaeologist, you only know what you know 2nd or 3rd hand at best. Until you are running around the Amazon, digging up ancient civilizations, you are simply believing the facts as relayed to you. You have no knowing based on experience. I would never claim that something is not possible - something maybe you see as a weakness. But maybe it is a strength. Maybe, just maybe, proclaiming something is not possible without any personal knowledge based on experience backing it up, is extremely shortsighted, and not very in tune with the scientific method of not dismissing any possibility until it has been well and thoroughly tested. And I have proof, in the form of a channeled text over 100 years old, that there things from ancient times which have been hidden from us, because we are not ready for them. Buy a copy of Unveiled Mysteries and read it. Then do some looking around YouTube for what they have only recently discovered using LIDAR. The author of this book is talking about things we knew nothing about back then, which have recently proven to be true. Oh and the people who went off into the jungle at the turn of the 1900s, some of them never to return, were laughed at too when they proclaimed they were looking for ancient civilizations, when all that was known at the time was that primitive tribes lived there. Yet now we know they were right. Maybe my mind is too open, and maybe yours is too closed. I think we could both benefit from changing our minds. And if I have you completely wrong I apologize. Trying not to assume anything, just expressing my feelings and thoughts. I mean no offense. I know I am criticizing here and I am sorry. Trying to practice being non-critical and non-judgmental of others and myself. I am still learning. I have a lot of work to do. P.S. As I shut down my computer I thought about what I had read in, "Autobiography of a Yogi." I am sure you are familiar with this text. How do you explain that account of that master who bi-located - was both at the temple and meeting the man coming to visit. This is something I assume not thought to be possible in science, and it would seem impossible to any skeptic. How do you handle an account like this? P.P.S. I called it a crane, but yes, it is a tripod. Also no, those blocks are not light at all. The tripod couldn't have moved them, but I'll accept that maybe he used it to pivot and stand the blocks using the technique you mentioned, or something similar. However, it still doesn't explain how he loaded up his truck when he moved the blocks to a new location, nor how he moved them from wherever he quarried them. P.P.P.S. You have inspired me to create a new saying! Thank you! | | | \/ \/ \/

Ahh Nungali! I miss the bitter taste of your acerbic wit... I was just thinking about you a month or so ago. Glad to see you still here, still active! The crane you see there is too weak to support the physical weight and mass of the stones. Also you need to watch something from YouTube that, loosely, ties in with this (at 7:48): The original video is here: Now this last video even pushes my credulity I admit. It's from a very strange YouTube channel and I am still investigating. But the principle is solid enough. All physical mass on earth, when you get down to a microscopic level, is space and vibration (we have talked about this before.) Everything operates at a certain frequency or vibration. If this is changed, you are no longer constrained by the constraints of the physical world, as you are no longer operating on that frequency. Is it too great a stretch of the scientific mind to say that all physical matter is really just light, operating at a lower frequency or vibration? P.S. One last thing... How do you think the Egyptians moved this, from their quarry location, to where they erected it, and how do you think they erected it? https://www.ancient-egypt-online.com/obelisks.html Same problem here: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/stonehenge/

This would definitely be another possibility to consider, that of finding whatever the opposite of gravity is, harnessing and using that. I have thought about that subject a lot myself. Odd that a man (me) with limited scientific understanding would find things like antigtavity so fascinating, to the point that one of my dreams is to have a workshop where I could build an antigravity car. I have no idea where this comes from, and I am afraid that the call to this will remain unanswered. In any case, yes, if you could find a way to reverse the pull of gravity on an object you could move it. However that still leaves the mystery of how the Tiwanaku stones, and the rounded holes in some of the pyramid stones, and possibly whatever hole existed in the Coral Castle gate stone, were made. Thinking about this some more I thought of density of matter. You could have a granite cube, a wood cube of the same size, a plastic cube the same size, and a foam cube the same size. Obviously the foam will be the lightest and easiest to cut. If a process was used that raised the frequency/vibration of an object, perhaps it was raised to something more like plastic, wood or modeling clay, lighter and easier to cut? It would be nice to know what books exactly E.L. was reading.

So I am reading the book, "Seven Steps To Inner Power" by Tae Yun Kim. On page 31, the beginning of Chapter 2, the author says, "Who am I? If I asked you to answer that question right now, what would you say?" So, gamely, I asked myself this question, and the answer I immediately received was, " I don't know." Of course I could give the "correct" answer - I am a physical manifestation of source energy, and perhaps this is what we all truly are in our base essence. But who am I as an individual manifestation of source consciousness? Who is this person in a male body identified with, labeled with and known by a name? The author goes on to say that our answer to the question who am I will be reflected in the lives we live. I can not see the correlation here very clearly, but I suspect I am living a life that is out picturing itself as a the life of a nobody. What I mean by that is I go through life virtually unnoticed by others. I could stand in a room with a group of you Dao Bum members and it is likely that many if not all of you wouldn't even know I was there! So my answer to this question troubles me, and I am not sure what to do about it. Any suggestions? P.S. I am like the character Therese in this scene:

Well... That cleared that right up! I needed to smile, so thank you all for your replies. But I am still troubled by this. Maybe it's a belief thing I adopted from parents/society/religion but I really feel that at 43 orbits around the sun I should know who I am. I don't want to be the person in the room nobody notices anymore, and I don't want to continue living the life I am currently experiencing.

I'm ripping off Sinfest's idea here Hopefully I will follow their example correctly... So let's dive in, shall we? I don't believe in fate or destiny. I'm not sure I believe in balance, karma, judgement or punishment either. I'm starting to believe that the afterlife I will experience when my time in this form is over will be exactly whatever I believe it will be, so I am choosing to be free to experience all afterlives, those based on humanity's beliefs and those which exist outside them. I'm also trying to focus on the God who exists outside of all humanity's belief when I pray. I believe our beliefs are chains which bind us or allow us to be controlled and I choose to be free. I am removing all attatchment to my beliefs. So now I leave you to challenge my perceptions here. Convince me that the things I don't believe in do exist. Or convince me that the things I do believe in don't exist. The challenge has been issued. Begin! DreamBliss

I know it may be against forum rules, resurrecting a thread from the dead like this, but I had a thought today about beliefs, about what they are, and this seemed the best place to share it. It comes in the form of a question... "Is a belief just something you say is true which you have not yet experienced?" This requires a bit of thinking... Nobody believes in gravity. We all experience gravity, so we know it is real. A lot of children in America believe in Santa Clause. Yet if any of them actually saw a man in a red suit manifest before their Christmas tree and draw presents from a magic bag, those children would no longer say they believe in Santa Claus. For them it has become a fact, because they have experienced the reality of Santa Claus personally. So many Christians say they believe in God, yet few of them have ever actually had any experience of God. If they ever do, they likey would no longer say they believed in God, because, again, it has become true for them. Your thoughts?

I was teaching myself the basics of Go and I thought... Maybe some folk here get together and play online? If so, any room for a very beginner level player?

I know that Valentine's Day is a holiday likely created by the greeting card companies. I know that the only power this holiday has over me and value it has to me is the power and value I give it. I know that when I am attached to or identified with certain outcomes involving this holiday, it will cause suffering. But still, the last time I got a legitimate Valentine's Day card was in grade school, and that was over 30 years ago! I wish I would have received even one card from someone even mildly interested in me. It would be nice to feel, just once, just for a moment, that I am desirable and that someone is interested in me. But no, I get to continue life as half a person, incomplete, not whole. And I get to have spiritual teachers continually tell me that all I need to be happy is found inside. Can you hold hands with what's inside you? Can you have make love to or have sex with it? Is there any physical or tangible contact at all? No. So I call bullspit on that, at least as far as it pertains to human relationships. Valentine's Day sucks! And I am still rooting for David Boreanaz's character in the movie Valentine...

Currently: The Book of Knowing and Worth by Paul Selig Emotional Freedom by Judith Orloff Anatomy of Loneliness by Teal Swan Unfu*K Yourself by Gary John Bishop Miracles Now by Gabrielle Berstein The Art of Communicating by Tich Nhat Hanh Seven Steps To Inner Power by Tae Yun Kim Bringing Your Shadow Out of The Dark by Robert Augustus Masters In The Beginning - The Opening in the Game of Go by Ishigure (does anyone in these forums play Go online?) Been reading a lot of channeled texts, including the Ascended Masters texts by Godfre. I am finding them to be transformatiive, and I have discovered that they collaborate with things we are only coming to learn now. For example, in Unveiled Mysteries, a great civilization in the jungle is mentioned, and only recently, using LIDAR technology, have we found the remains of a HUGE, ancient city, long forgotten and buried by time. These books were originally written between 1900-1930, a time when almost everyone believed that the races in the jungle were merely primitive and that no technologically advanced society ever existed there. This has now been disproved, and, from what I have read in this book, there are more exciting discoveries to come!

I have no idea why I am so attached to Valentine's Day. Maybe it hearkens back to when I was in grade school, and getting Valentine's Day cards from the girls (I had 3 girlfriends back then between the 2nd and 3rd grades.) So maybe I just miss the card? Or maybe the card is a symbol that someone actually cares about me, a legitimate, tangible, piece of evidence that I actually do matter? Or maybe I am a hopeless romantic with no romance in his life and that's the whole problem?

Yes Fa Xin, I will be your Valentine! ... and if you are a dude, well, I will just consider that yet another life lesson.

Ah yes! The patriarchal system established by religion... My response to this? Give me FREE LOVE BABY!!!

Old enough to know better, young enough not to care Apparently, we are all physical manifestations of Source Energy, and Source Energy, AKA God/Buddha/Allah et all is love. So ultimately we are all individual physical manifestations of love. That said, when you squeeze a lemon, most of the time you will get lemon juice. The question is: when you "squeeze" a person, what exactly comes out? Ideally it would be love, but if that person has no love inside, meaning no love for themselves and as a result no love for others, no love will come out. So you have to love yourself somehow, then you will have love to give others. Which logically would mean that to love is the most important thing. Whereas to be loved is, ultimately, irrelevant, as we could be the best version of ourselves possible and people could still hate us, or worse, not care we exist. We can't control the feelings and responses of others, and how someone feels about us is not our concern. If we wait for others to love us, then we are going to be criticizing and judging them, and these things are not indicative of love. We have to somehow love ourselves first, entirely, without any holding back or reservations. Then we somehow have to learn to love others the same way. What they feel about is is irrelevant to our practice of being love to them. We love them independent of their feelings for us. But I think I am speaking of ideals here. The goal to work towards, not the actual state most of us live in, including myself. And I am certainly not feeling very loving toward myself. I think what is coming out of me as I am being squeezed is closer to lemon juice - the sour juices of loneliness, pain, resentment and self-hatred.

My site is here: https://blisswriter.wordpress.com/

So I went into my local library and saw the Te of Poo by Benjamin Hoff in some children's books that were for sale. Paid $1.00 for it. I have started reading it, and am enjoying it immensely. But I am curious to know if Mr. Hoff is providing accurate, truthful information regarding the Tao. I thought, "Hey, I remember a place where a bunch of people hang out that would know about this!" Yeah I know, I'm on-again, off-again. If this forum was my girlfriend she would probably be loosing patience with me What? You don't call or write for months at a time! What kind of relationship do you think this is??? ...and yes, for those of you who remember me I am still studying the teachings of LoA, which I know you are happy to hear! OK, back to topic... Mr. Hoff essentially says that Taoism is the opposite of Confucianism. I won't go into all the details here, this post is more for those who know these books, and who know Confucianism and Taoism, and know whether or not the books are recording things accurately. This is really for my own curiously. What the author says makes sense, but I like second and third opinions. OK I am off to bed. It may be 100 degrees or so here in a few hours so I want to get as much rest as I can.

You know, now that I think about it, we have a similar issue in the West right now. We have Christianity, which in its various forms, including Catholicism, have formed and shaped this country and the mindset of its people. But unlike China, we have no opposing religion to Christianity. I think that is a big problem actually. I think we should have had an opposing religion from the start, to stand up for the Native Americans and their beliefs for one thing, and the animals like the buffalo for another. I wonder what kind of effect it would have to start an opposing religion now. I think the damage has already been done, and the best that can be done now in the West is to undo it by going East and getting one's beliefs challenged. Still there is Capitalism, and how that connects to Christianity I'm not sure. But Capitalism certainly needs to be opposed. Except the Capitalists have entire armies, including the police, that are better armed and trained than the average civilian. Same sort of tyranny as went on in China long ago. The few controlling the many. How do you oppose that? Also remembering that resistance to something only makes it stronger, and focus on what is not wanted only perpetuates it. So yeah, that is one doozy of a problem to work out.

I know nothing about any contest, and this post was not posted for any such. But now that I know of one I will certainly look into it. But since I am going to do all the work, I will keep the money for myself What drove me to start this thread was passages such as these, from the chapter, "Very Small Animal" in "The Te of Piglet": "We might point out here that Taoism has always been fond of Very Small Animals. Aside from animals themselves - which Confucianists as mere things to eat, sacrifice or pull plows and wagons - the Very Small Animals of Confucianist-dominated Chinese society were women, children, and the poor. Stepped on by greedy merchants, landholders and government officials, the poor were at the very bottom of the Confusionist social scale. To put it another way, they weren't on it at all. Women, even those of wealthy families - especially those of wealthy families - weren't much better off as the Confucianists practiced arranged marriage, polygamy, foot-binding (foot-breaking, actually) and other customs so repressive to women that no one in today's West could comprehend them.Children didn't have a very jolly time of it, either. To the staunch Confucianist, children existed to carry on the family line, unquestionably obey their parents in every matter, and take care of them in their old age - not to have ideas, ideals and interests of their own. Under Confucianism. a father could justifiably kill a son who disobeyed or disgraced him, as such behavior was considered criminal. In contrast, Taoism held that respect was something one earned, and that if Big Daddy misbehaved, his family had the right to rebel. That applied to the emperor and his "family" - his subjects - as well: If the emperor was a tyrant, the people had the right to take him off the throne. High Confusionist officials lived in constant fear of Taoist- and Buddhist-influence secret societies that were ever-ready to defend the stepped-on and attempt to topple the Dragon Throne if conditions became intolerable, which they often did. Taoist sympathies were always with the the Underdog - the outcasts and unfortunates of Chinese society, including those financially ruined by the tricks of corrupt merchants and officials and forced to become "Brothers of the Green Woods" (outlaws) and "Guests of the Rivers and Lakes" (vagabonds). The Chinese martial arts were developed primarily by Taoists and Buddhist monks, in order to defend the defenseless and enable them to defend themselves. They might better be termed the anti-martial arts, as they were employed not only against armed bandits, but also against the soldiers of warlords and governing bodies, whenever they turned their swords against the weak. While Buddhist martial arts tended to concentrate on the "hard" forms of defense (from which evolved the forceful and direct Karate and Tae Kwon Do), Taoists tended to concentrate on the "soft" forms, such as the fluid and indirect T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Pa Kua Chang (similar to, but more sophisticated than, Judo and Aikido)." It goes on to talk about how the Taoists wrote stories that the Confucianists tried to repress. Later it says, "...the Taoist view was historically more or less the opposite of the Confucianist." What do you folks think? Is this accurate?

In ACIM (A Course of Miracles), which I am currently studying, I am told that ultimately, having and giving are exactly the same thing, and furthermore, that having rests on giving. So I try to understand this intellectually at first... I have a tomato. I give you the tomato that, until then, I considered myself to have had. Now I have no tomato. How is having no tomato the same as giving that tomato to you? I know that part of the conflict in this comes because as long as I have not moved beyond or past ego, my mind is inherently conflicted. Ego sees these two states as opposite. But the Holy Spirit, as it is called in ACIM, sees them as the same because God sees them as the same, and whoever I am beyond or outside of the ego sees them as the same. It is only in an egoic state they appear opposite. I also know that this ties in with a couple other concepts, that I am one with everything, and can never really loose anything because I am one with all. Also that there is a mindset of lack or something missing here, coming from the ego and how it sees the world. If I give you the tomato, the implication in my mind is that, as I said, now I have no tomato. I am lacking the tomato. So help me understand this as much as possible with my conflicted mind. Having and giving are the same thing, but how? Thanks! P.S. Off subject, but in case anyone wants more details about my journey, which I have still not really completed anywhere, you can get an overview here: https://blisswriter.wordpress.com/2016/08/10/8-10-2016-so-i-completed-the-30-day-writing-challenge/ Just put that there as I am coming back here after a long absence and there are bound to be those curious. P.P.S. I am learning the piano! If you have any books or dvds you want to get rid of, or which you would recommend, on this subject, please let me know!

Here's a quote from, "Emmanuel's Book" by Pat Rodegast that I think provides another perspective on this: "The way to transform violence back into the beautiful Light force that it truly is is the exquisite task of seeing violence not as it presents itself, but as the force that it will ultimately become. There is a key here for all of you: see even in the most despicable the Divine quality that has become distorted. What would violence be in its Divine state before it has been twisted into vicious aggression? It is the power to stand and to speak and to witness to a deep faith in the Light. Violence is a form of witnessing to, but it is witnessing to distortion rather than to truth. There is courage in violence. Don't forget that for one moment. It is stepping out, going beyond the 'shoulds' and 'shouldn'ts.' It is saying, 'I exist and I must be seen." Hear that in the context of spiritual teaching and you will find the means by which violence can be transformed within yourself and therefore within the world. Murder, violence, cruelty, visciosness, wickedness - yes this all exists just as kindergarten exists before first grade. Violence is painful for you who look from a level beyond (not better than but certainly wiser that), and see with the anguish the anguish that creates the anguish. Do not be afraid of terror. Do not react violently to violence. Do not feel pain abut pain. By doing so, you perpetuate what you are seeking to avoid. When you pass judgement on such things you are limiting God's reality to your human understanding. From where you sit, there is right and wrong and from where I sit, there is truth. Many in your human world might relish what punishment may come to the murderer as he enters into another life to atone for his violence. Yet you cannot judge that. You can only bless and pray and open and trust." I take away two things from this. Having and Giving are the same energy, but with different focuses. I am still wrapping my head around that. The other thing that I have been saying for some time now is that resistance to something only makes it stronger. Focus on what is not wanted only perpetuates whatever what is not wanted. I have picked this up through a variety of books and teachings, including LoA, and my own contemplation. It is interesting to see it verified here, in a book written so long ago that I am not sure many are aware of. It is a wonderful, loving text and I highly recommend it. What are your thoughts on this?

I am struggling with something. How many times have I said those words I wonder? I have finished reading Joel Goldsmith's, "Art of Spiritual Healing." He is one of those teachers lumped into the "New Thought" movement at the turn of last century. The book was very hard to read, and I found it troubling. But I didn't get the sense I was being lied to. Quite the opposite. Mr. Goldsmith spoke very authoritatively, and it made sense with what I have learned in my own experience. The whole point of the book, its theme, is that God does the healing. God does the creating. Everything is done by God. That is how Jesus worked. Essentially we must come to an inner God-realization and open ourselves to God working through us. While God was the name used, the book was not specifically Christian, and you can probably substitute God with whatever name you have for the energy that powers everything, I call it the Source. The book details the process of what "New Thought" folks called a Treatment. Someone comes to you and asks for a Treatment. You forget their name or what they want treated. You come before God, inside, and you focus on some aspect of God. If someone has come for a Treatment of sickness you come before God by realizing this energy is perfect health. You focus on the nature of God, there is some sort of release, and then you are done. What bothers me about this is that it puts me back under God's thumb, and worse, seems to say that I do not really exist. That the energy that gives my physical body life is God. My identity, who I am, as I used to say who I truly am inside, does not really exist. Basically we are puppets and God's hand is what gives up life and movement. We do not create, God creates through us. We do not heal, God heals through us. This idea seems to reinforce the idea which I have encountered in other spiritual teachings, that our real purpose is to become one with God. Self-annihilation, God as Brahman. I find this worse than the Christian idea of Heaven VS Hell. I may have said some of this elsewhere, if I did I apologize for repeating myself. Anyhow It used to be that I could think of nothing worse than staying in one place for all eternity. There is the whole afterlife to explore, and I would like to do that. Well this idea, that all I do is become energy and cease to exist in any form I can move about in, that I merge with God and disappear - well this is worse. To add insult to injury I am told this is really the purpose of my physical existence, and that of myself I can do nothing. There is one problem with this idea. Who created the ego? Because if Joel Goldsmith is right, man does not create anything, so God had to have created the ego. Why? Why create an ego for us, so we can be separate from God, if indeed were were one with this energy in the first place, only to tell us that we have no power outside of God and are supposed to be one with this energy? It makes no sense. When I left the Christian faith I liked that I no longer had to deal with God's Will. I was in charge of my life here on earth. There was a path I could follow to my true life, but it was my choice. I chose to follow it. Furthermore I could manifest what I needed here in the physical realm, whether it be an object or healing. I felt like I had power. I am not power-crazed or anything. It was just nice to know that in a world where I could not control the actions of others, where there were things I had no power to change in society, I could at the very least choose what to think, choose to see things the way I wanted them to be, and know that this would affect the reality I experienced. I had a way to change things in my life I wanted to change, and I didn't need social prestige or money. But now this, and I have to apply it. I have to try it. Because if I was truly in charge of my life, I would not be living where I am now. This is not a conscious decision. I do not want to be here in this tiny room, in a place where I am surrounded by Christians, where I have little or no social or spiritual opportunities. Obviously changing my thinking patterns, changing my thoughts, has done little to change my reality, beyond making money come to me easier, for which I am grateful. Now I have to figure out how to become God-realized, to allow God to work through me. If this is how Jesus operated, I want to operate in the same way. I want to test this out, apply it, live it, become it and then decide if it has proven to be experientially true. Tonight I had a thought that inspired this thread. Jesus wept. He then resurrected Lazarus from the dead. If this really happened it tells me something. God, or as Jesus referred to Him, His Father, didn't give a flying you-know-what about Lazarus. Didn't care, didn't not care, beyond those feelings. But Jesus did. If Jesus was allowing His Father to work through him, then that tells me that Jesus still had his personality, his identity. Something beyond the ego and its identification with the physical body labelled Jesus. Jesus made the choice who to raise up. This was His decision. His will. But His Father did the raising, if Goldsmith is right. So perhaps becoming one with God does not mean self-annihilation? There is still something there, an identity, a presence, that is unique to each person? If so it wouldn't be so bad to be a puppet with God's hand up his arse. Are we all just puppets, just God playing at being the multitude of forms in the physical realm, with nothing left but God after the form has ceased to function, or is there something more to us? If we are waves in the Source ocean, when we subside is there anything left of us at all, or is all that we think we are just an illusion, with God being the only reality? What are your thoughts?

I could make a lot of spaghetti with 10,000 tomatoes...

There is no universe. It is all an illusion. There is is-ness, that which is, call it what you will. There is how we paint on top of that with our beliefs and thoughts - our perceptions. Most of us do not interact with things as they are. You pick up a rock and what you are holding is a collections of beliefs and thoughts about rocks. We have had this discussion before somewhere... Very few, if any of us, approach something like a rock without any preconceptions, seeing it as it really is. The same is true of the entire universe. The illusion is separation, me being separate from the tomato once I give it to you. Someone already alluded to this in this thread. I think perhaps the answer is that without ego, giving and receiving are the same thing.

I think I am gaining some understanding here... The tomato's only value is what I have assigned to it. The tomato is a symbol. In my perception it is a physical object. In reality it is a manifestation of energy that has taken a particular form I label tomato, and associate with other labels such as vegetable (or fruit or whatever humans categorize it as) and spaghetti sauce. Of course I am a symbol and the person I think of as having given the tomato to is a symbol. In reality that person and myself are one, not separate. It is because I see that person as separate and not me that I feel loss if I give them something, or they take it from me. We are not separate from the tomato either, and really the tomato is not separate from its vine, although it appears to be. All ideas, all symbols, all manifested energy. From this viewpoint then, it does not matter if they get the tomato from me, or I keep it, or it stays on the vine. As we are all one it is all the same. Their "having" or "possessing" it is the same as me "having" or "possessing" it, and the same as it remaining on the vine. Whatever or whoever "has" it is the same as me "having" it. Now from a strictly physical viewpoint it does not feel or seem the same. If they eat the tomato I will not feel full. There is a belief, mindset and perception system in place here that says, essentially, that I have to eat the tomato to experience fullness from it. But if the mind can not discern between a real or imagined experience, theoretically, I should be able to imagine eating a tomato and experience the real physical effects of fullness. At this point in my spiritual development however, I will not test this theory, or I will starve to death. Maybe an enlightened being has this ability? As far as what can or can not be mentally grasped... In mu opinion I can figure out anything. I can intellectually find my way around or through any subject. Or at least most any subject. But I will never really KNOW it until I have EXPERIENCED it. I have talked about this before, what I learned at that Vipassana retreat. I can not find the words now. I just remember that the goal is to directly experience a teaching. It is not enough to read a book, which gives you the experience of others. That will allow you to understand it at an intellectual level. But to know it for yourself you have to experience it for yourself. In this case I have to experience the truth of giving and having being the same thing. I think the first step is understanding it intellectually, wrapping one's head around it so-to-speak. That will go to work on deeply ingrained and adopted ways of thinking that can not see these things as the same. The next step is to somehow, in some way, experience this. I have no idea how that will happen or even if it can. But I will practice openness and receptivity to this lesson. As far as the validity of ACIM... I honestly don't care. I appreciate Osho, and he was also controversial. I appreciate Abraham, and there are some around here that disagree with these teachings. What maters to me is what is having a positive affect on my life? What is transforming my life, helping me challenge beliefs, habits, mindsets and ways of thinking? What is it that is eroding these adopted and deeply ingrained blocks to that which is Truth that I have acquired from my family, religion and society? The answer, at this moment, is ACIM. It is helping me to see the world differently, It is challenging and transforming me. I believe and think that its influence is beneficial and positive, so I will continue to study it. But that may not be the path for others. I will listen to my guts, my instincts, that still, small voice inside that Christians call the Holy Spirit. I will pay attention to my feelings. I will place my awareness on what I feel as I read. It is by these thing that I will come to my own decision about the validity of any work. I believe and think we have to be careful about or beliefs, feelings and thoughts about channeled material. As if it is somehow lacking or less valid than "normal" writing. All writing is channeled. I am a writer and I know that. These words are not my own. They come to me from somewhere, some Source, travel through me and come out colored my my me-ness, whatever that is. Your words will come out unlike mine, even if they are the same. If I recall correctly one of the teachings of ACIM is, "Where there is fear there is not love." I may have the Source wrong here, could have gotten that from Tolle. This is what I would advise you watch for and become aware of in your life. Is fear at the root of what you are believing, feeling, saying or thinking about something? Do I have to tell you how horrible a master fear is? Do I have to point to the past and show you what humans, rules by fear, have done? You do not understand a "channeled" text. Humans fear that which they do not understand. It is a knee-jerk default reaction. If you are being aware, in the present moment, you can catch it. If you can become aware of it you can change it. Free yourself from fear. I will close with one of my all-time favorite quotes (those who know me saw this coming:)

I may get into details later, but to keep it simple I received advice that I need get grounded, or be rooted. I recalled that someone here at this forums advised the same thing. I confess I wasn't really listening then, but I am listening now. How does one go about getting grounded? What kinds of practices are there, besides meditation? As always, I appreciate your help. I think I will come back and give more details as to why I am asking this later.