I, It ... Thou

[sean]

I think most of us are aware of at least the concept of I Am, as in the sense that our true identity is not separate from God ... I Am That. And many of us are probably aware of and relate to the idea of a Mother Nature, Gaia, ... the material world as Spinoza's God substance. The primordial, living, monistic "It". But I'm curious to hear what your thoughts on Thou are? Are we embarrassed these days to discuss Thou? The personal relationship with God that we can speak with directly. What is your sense of this? Does the sheer ignorance of fundamentalism in the world make us too self-conscious to pray? Are we afraid of having our autonomy swallowed up if we allow ourselves to be in a relationship with the Divine?

 

What's up?

 

Sean

[Lozen]

You reading Martin Buber again?

[sean]

You reading Martin Buber again?

No, still not reading. I'm loosely aware that this is one of Buber's big areas of dialogue, but I've yet to read him actually. Please share what you've gotten out of him though, and any other ideas you have.

[Lozen]

It's been a while, but he wrote a book called I and Thou, and basically he thinks human existence is defined by the way we dialogue with each other, the world, and with God. He says most people view the world as I-It or I-Thou. I-it is a relation of subject to object, and I-Thou is subject to subject. So he thinks it is transcendent or better or whatever to see humans as whole beings, that being I-Thou, than as their isolated or more specific attributes, or as objects. I-thou is recipricoal, I-it is separate, detached, objectifying. Love is I-thou. It is not relational, it's unified. Also, kind of fitting in with other discussions we've been having, I-it separates the I, whereas, I-Though includes the though and the I in the I. Or something. Also, Buber says that God is Thou, and if viewed as such one can speak directly to God. But you can't actually have an I-It relationship with God, because God is the eternal Thou. I'm not really clear on this because not everyone has an I-thou relationship with God, but according to Buber if you do, then you therefore have an I-thou relationship with the rest of the world as well.

 

I just got rid of most of my notes from this book and other college books because the philosophizing hasn't really helped me at all on my path. I envy your not reading.

[Lozen]

One more thing--to respond to your original question... I do think that sometimes our belief in and relationship with God is lost in the process of trying to find new and more effective spiritual excercises. And a lot of people and myself in the past are too afraid to drop ego and have to do things they may not like but really would be helpful to bringing them closer to the Divine. Instead people would prefer to try to manipulate reality to fit their desires, forgetting what the entire reason behind this whole thing is to begin with.

 

I pray (usu. silently and try to pray egolessly) every morning and evening, before I eat, and whenever situations arise throughout the day.

[Cameron]

My favorite interpretation of this aspect I have found so far is in Ken Cohen's book Honoring The Medicine. Not sure if we are talking about the same thing but I like the terms Great Spirit or Great Mystery. Lots of cool stuff in there about comminucating with it.

 

Cam

[neimad]

well you are using language too philosophical or intellectual for me haha.....

 

but i think i understand what you are getting at.

 

you have identified that we are not seperate from god. you have also identified that there is a consciounsess of the planet (the matrix... the hypnotic illusion we are all a part of) but the part you are speaking about is what is our relationship to it?

 

i like to use the microcosm/macrocosm analogy of our body to think about this.

 

in our bodies we have trillions of cells, each with its own form of consciousness.

we are to god what these cells are to us.

IMHO.

 

i don't pray to god because i think god has as much chance of hearing one of our individual prayers as we do of hearing one individual of the trillions of cells in our bodies trying to talk to us.

however i do try to listen to god through meditation.

 

we already are, were and will forever be in a relationship with the divine. i think that opening ourselves to that relationship involves listening rather than talking. i think our purpose is to achieve enlightened states of consciousness so the entire being we are a part of can grow itself. the more of us who raise ourselves, the more that the entirety will raise itself.

 

however i do believe that gratitude (even as a form of prayer) is incredibly powerful.

[Cameron]

What Neimad said...

[sean]

I-thou is recipricoal, I-it is separate, detached, objectifying. Love is I-thou. It is not relational, it's unified.

Beautiful. Beautiful!

 

But you can't actually have an I-It relationship with God, because God is the eternal Thou.

Yet Spinoza had a pretty deep I-It relationship with God, as did many of the Taoists ... and the Eastern mystics have powerful I-I relationships with God, although God is often not named as such.

 

I do think that sometimes our belief in and relationship with God is lost in the process of trying to find new and more effective spiritual excercises. And a lot of people and myself in the past are too afraid to drop ego and have to do things they may not like but really would be helpful to bringing them closer to the Divine. Instead people would prefer to try to manipulate reality to fit their desires, forgetting what the entire reason behind this whole thing is to begin with.

Funny, these are the exact problems I was thinking arise in avoiding I-Thou when I wrote my post. I-It is God as a force that can be used; alchemy. I-I is treating the self experience as a doorway to God; meditation. Both essential and also in extremes probably lead to manipulativeness and arrogance respectively.

 

I-Thou is divine as real living being that we can speak with, love and worship through devotion, prayer, bhakti, guru. I feel like this is a huge neglected piece for us modern mystics. I think we see how it can lead to fanatacism, fundamentalism, "my" God vs. "your" God kind of shit ... but maybe we are throwing personal God out with the bathwater. (?)

 

Lozen, when you pray, do you talk to God in 2nd person?

 

Not sure if we are talking about the same thing but I like the terms Great Spirit or Great Mystery. Lots of cool stuff in there about comminucating with it.

Cam, outside of the terminology, I'm more interested in your style of communication. Do you ever relate to this Great Mystery as a Being that you can commune with? Instead of just as a quality of enlightenment, or a truth of the universe.

 

i don't pray to god because i think god has as much chance of hearing one of our individual prayers as we do of hearing one individual of the trillions of cells in our bodies trying to talk to us.

Neimad, how you feel if you thought that, hypothetically, God could hear you? You. Would it scare you to think that right now you could speak directly to God? Just curious.

 

Sean

[Cameron]

Sean, it's hard to talk about that

 

Intellectually, I like to think there is an aspect of ourselves that is already deeply connected to the source, God, Tao whatever concepts/language but I think it is more as the totality of nature/spirit that is beyond words and concepts.

 

To think of it as a being would be very narrow in my view and sort of like trying to pinpoint something that can't be bogged down. Like Ken Cohen told Yael in her inteverview it is the "Everywhere Tao". If the Tao is everywwhere..inside your body, your breath, the mountains and rivers, cities and people, how can I pinpoint a seperate "God".

 

Of course, your talking about "talking to God" but I am not sure when I have a concersation with you or my friends or some random person that is not "God" manifest!

 

If everything is qi, then we are just a variation of the Qi that fills the universe. Actually, I would say that would be my best answer at this point. Sometimes I just look at the stars at night or the sun shining and can feel a silent strength. A force of love and compassion that literally fills the universe with it's light. A communication happens but I would almost say it is more on the qi or shen level than an intelelctual conversation in the english language or whatever.

 

It seems to move deeper into the realms of intent and deep emotion and less language like you talk to people with..a kind of contrived expression we use to live our life out of neccissity.

[Lozen]

Lozen, when you pray, do you talk to God in 2nd person?

 

Yeah. Just ask for help. I'll pray for strength to be able to do all the things I need to do even though they're hard, and I'll pray for healing and the strength I'll need to drop enough ego to do what I need to do to be able to heal, so that I can help others, and then I pray for people that are lost, that they'll find their way to the Light. I'll pray for specific people, usually friends and family members and people who piss me off, and of course the kids I volunteer with, and anything else that comes up. Lately I've been praying for my friends to be able to have the strength to let go of things that are harmful to them, and also for me to have the strength to be an example for them. I've also been praying for women that need to get to the WSD class I'm organizing to do what they need to do to get there.

 

It's funny, because I've been talking to Sacred Fire Community folks, and they think it's wrong to pray for people who didn't specifically ask you to, because they are not aligned with it, you can send them good wishes but you need to make sure you are asking for what the personal truly needs and not what their ego/mind wants. I don't think I agree with him, but I do try to make vague requests, like, Please help them in whatever way they need and are open for.

 

When I meditate I don't feel like I'm listening to God--I feel like I'm just trying to slow down my breathing and my heart rate. I feel that God speaks to me through my dreams, through other people, and through the five zillion synchronicities I'm experiencing even more frequently... I do feel though like my luminous excercises connect me to God, by opening up my chakras and connecting me to a higher level frequency somehow.

[thaddeus]

 

Neimad, how you feel if you thought that, hypothetically, God could hear you? You. Would it scare you to think that right now you could speak directly to God? Just curious.

 

Sean

 

I was up one night philosophising with my born again christian college roommate and we were talking about god. Suddenly it was like there was this presence in the room. I asked him if he felt that and he said yes and got freaked out. I was scared too, but in awe at the same time. It was extremely tangible.

I never felt that strong force again, but I get comfort in connecting with god. Recently I decided it would be a good practice to just bask in this presence. However, my monkey mind distracts me. But it's something, coincidentally, I just started to work on.

T

[sean]

I was raised Catholic and so all I knew when I was growing up was 2nd person relationship with God. I prayed and my family and community prayed so my first spiritual experiences were in this 2nd person context. One of the first things that struck me about Eastern wisdom when I began studying it was God as 1st person. I was blown away. God is inside of myself, not an anthropomorphized man in the clouds. Christians were stupid, creating a duality by projecting their fantasies onto an image that comforts them. This is what I thought. And I noticed how resistant most Christians I talked to were to the idea of the ultimate, true identity of Self as God. Later I came across various systems theories, Taoism, Spinoza ... God in 3rd person as the harmonious balance of everything and nothing. 2nd person looked even stupider now. I couldn't believe people prayed. What a fantasy. Buddhists are scientists. Christians are so lost in metaphors.

 

Now I am starting to come full circle. I've noticed that many of the mystics I am drawn to the most, while having a deep experience and understanding of nonduality, still manage to preserve a sacred "other" to pour out poetry and song to. To Love. And it's not in a way that is creating duality. It's in a way that holds all three perspectives. It's from a 1st person nondual perspective that we can say, I Am God worshipping mySelf. And from a 3rd person perspective, we can see that we are an interdependent hologram in God's Mind. And also from the 2nd person, we can, mysteriously and actually (not metaphorically) relate with God even as God and inside God. Each of the three perspectives has a valid critique of the others. Because they are only perspectives they are limited. The ability to hold and fluidly move through all three is a fuller kind of enlightenment IMO than rejecting one because of it's shortcomings.

 

I'm really seeing what Buber means ... I'm really thinking that it's only when we deeply respect and commune in 2nd person that we begin to treat "others" as holy. Think about it. If we are only hanging out in 1st person I Amness, than other people you relate with are not really real, they are just illusions dancing on the surface of Consciousness. Hopefully that perception also extends backward enough to include yourself or you are in big trouble, but either way, from this perspective, it's all just a dream. In 3rd person everything is objectifed. Maybe everything is a big energy field folding on itself, reflecting itself. You notice the alchemy of your chi field and another coming together and effecting themselves, the environment. But it's only in 2nd person that God can be seen as a mysterious "other". God as so free from duality, that God can move in and through duality unscathed. I think this is realy when we can see manifestation as a celebration of form instead of a dream or a mistaken perception.

 

Maybe you think I am overthinking this one. It's simpler than this, Sean, stop thinking so much. But I am describing perspectives that already exist, not inventing filters. 1st, 2nd, 3rd person are really basic features of consciousness and it would make sense for perceptual blind spots to arise from avoiding one, strongly favoring another, etc.

 

My concern though is how to have a 2nd person relationship with God that is not part of the problem. That is not in danger of becoming part of an ethnocentric, fundamentalist mindset. I mean, we've gotten pretty heated in even just this community disagreeing on merely theoretical considerations of emptiness vs. subtle body work, etc. ... imagine how much is added to the fire when people are communicating with God in different styles, using different names, feeling like they are being told things that they then interpret in their own tradition ... and they start trying to discuss these things with very few higher intellectual tools or distinctions. Sadly that's how wars start.

 

 

Sean

[neimad]

Neimad, how you feel if you thought that, hypothetically, God could hear you? You. Would it scare you to think that right now you could speak directly to God? Just curious.

 

haha.

the nature of the paradox. i have been realising lately that i cannot voice an opinion on anything that is not paradoxical. i can no longer speak in anything that is not paradoxical. its messed up.

 

well.... i guess i am in constant communication with god. but at the same time i am already god. god is something outside that i am a part of... but at the same time it's something that is inside.

 

i can't speak directly to god because there is nothing to speak to and there is nothing to say.

one time though i couldn't sleep and i decided to ask myself the question "where am i?". i threw around a lot of answers like "i am here", "i am infinite" and so on.... then finally i got to "i am now" and i had this resounding feeling that shook me right up.... like a voice in my head that didn't use any words but conveyed the feeling "exactly!"

i am now.

that's it... that's all it is. the rest is just a hypnotic illusion, even the notion of a god as something seperate to us (even though i just previously used the analogy of us being a cell within it) it illusory. there is no seperation, it doesn't exist, cannot exist.

 

some days... like today... everything seems so illusory. i feel like everything i am looking at that is outside me is actually going on inside me.

 

bizarre.

 

 

i just read your last post, sean.

 

where you say that to be caught up seeing reality as an illusion basically disables having effective relationships with others.

on the surface level i agree......

 

but as this feeling really comes into being, eventually you can only have effective relationships with everything and everyone as you recognise them as just being a part of yourself and vice versa.

 

there is no seperation between me and you. we are made up of the same stuff, and below that the same infinite consciousness is projecting both of us into this world.

 

we are all little puppets being controlled by a trillion armed octopus, but somehow we managed to forget about the strings between us and it and that we aint seperate haha.

weird analogy but i just made it up myself

[thelerner]

Neimad quote "we are all little puppets being controlled by a trillion armed octopus, but somehow we managed to forget about the strings between us and it and that we aint seperate haha.

weird analogy but i just made it up myself "

 

Well, I eat octopus for breakfast, one tentacle at a time.

 

I try to think that, the god who isn't here, right here, right now, isn't really worth a damn. Its only with the realization that his presence is here, now that we get a glimpse of all that is holy.

 

There is a struggle to escape from the notion of the Zeusian god. The bible doesn't make the task easier. I've found its only through the writings of mystics, those who've found connection to the all, that I see signs of what Is.

 

These days I'm into Rabbi Aarons concept of Panentheism (note not Pantheism). That we exist intimately within god, are made of god. Beyond seeing the unity is the reality that the thought and thinker are god.

 

Horribly enough I think South Park got it right when they showed enlightened aliens who had one word. Makblar. As in, the Makblar markblared the makblar, as the basic description of everything that is.

 

Michael

[Cameron]

I always thought the Greek Gods were, well...fun.

 

Zeus, God of thunder, Aries God of war, Hermes the messanger, Aphrodite Goddess of love.

 

They partied and drank and sang songs and had battles on Mt Olympus and were basically just more powerful versions of humans.

 

Actually they did have a nice cosmology that was sort of Taoist. Mother Earth, Gaia, looked up and fell in love with Father Sky(forgot the Greek name) and they gave birth to all the Gods.

 

Seems that is how it must have went down in one way shape or form. Whether Father Sky is an actual Heavenly father or Aliens or whatever is another subject.

[neimad]

Well, I eat octopus for breakfast, one tentacle at a time.

 

whats your point?

 

That we exist intimately within god, are made of god. Beyond seeing the unity is the reality that the thought and thinker are god.

 

 

this is pretty much what i was saying....

we are within god, we are made of god, we are god.

 

all this seperation stuff, this polarity, this duality.... it's all just illusion. it's the matrix, and we are living right in it.

 

two ways to think about it, which i believe are essentially the same but one has a more positive connotation and the other more negative....

 

either infinite consciousness (god) decided to see what it was like to have an experience. so it created all the universes, galaxies, solar systems, suns, planets, beings and matter to see what it was all like to live like this. we are now in the process of gathering up this experience (we as seperate identies of what is really just inifinite consciousness, who we really are) and over trillions of 'years' (really just a fart length of time for infinite consciousness) the entire experience takes place, ends and infinite consciousness goes "well that was interesting. what shall i do next?"

 

or as the view that david icke puts forward, which is very similar but more sinister (but still true to an extent as far as i'm concerned) is that the matrix, a self-perputuating free energy device powered by our fear and negative emotions, somehow seperated itself from infinite consciousness and keeps us all trapped here through a massive variety of methods.

 

to me this matrix is definately real, it operates on many levels to trap and confuse us and vampire our fear energy (shit i need to pay the bills. shit i need to be immortal. shit i need to do this or that. shit i'm scared if i say that. shit i'm scared of getting cancer... and so on... it's all bollocks anyway) but i think it is only a part of the story and that still ultimately the purpose for being here is part of the giant experience.

 

what's it like to be divided from our infinite nature? well every single one of us can now accurately answer that question..... when we all meet up together us oneness we'll be able to 'discuss' it hahahaha!

 

i doubt anyone out there will agree with me, and honestly it doesn't bother me as infinite expressions of the one we are all entitled to our experience with whatever beliefs we would like to hold with that.

[sean]

[Trunk]

I think most of us are aware of at least the concept of I Am, as in the sense that our true identity is not separate from God ... I Am That. And many of us are probably aware of and relate to the idea of a Mother Nature, Gaia, ... the material world as Spinoza's God substance. The primordial, living, monistic "It". But I'm curious to hear what your thoughts on Thou are? Are we embarrassed these days to discuss Thou? The personal relationship with God that we can speak with directly. What is your sense of this? Does the sheer ignorance of fundamentalism in the world make us too self-conscious to pray? Are we afraid of having our autonomy swallowed up if we allow ourselves to be in a relationship with the Divine?

Back in the 80's I heard of a spiritual group, that went through phases of spiritual practice on a 'semester' basis. For a few months they'd emphasize mysticism (power), another: bhakti (devotion), another: jhana (knowledge). Or something similar to that. There are the different yogas: karma, jhana (not sure if I'm spelling that right), bhakti, dhyana (meditation).

 

The devotional part of it really moves things along. Devotional chanting, yearning for God. Basically anything that is part of, an expression of, the yearning. (ex, Could be washing the dishes. Not kidding.)

[neimad]

On the other hand if you really push this "separation is an illusion" frame to an extreme in your own experience, I think it can really pop you into a nondual state. Like, neimad, who are you addressing when you write "all this separation stuff ... it's all just an illusion". Yourself? Why? And what are you using to type your message? A computer I supposed. Are you that computer also? So you are typing on yourself to yourself. And whose fingers are you using? Are they yours? Because who is the you that is separate to have fingers to type with? *poof*

 

affirmation.

the more i reflect on the illusory nature of things, the less that i am bothered by anything. when i remember that nothing is real.... i can be present. i can be in this experience, in the now. bills, girlfriends, friends, time, nothing is worrying and i feel content and bliss. at times i truly feel this.

i am infinite consciousness having an experience.

 

This is the great paradox of form is emptiness, emptiness is form ... separation is nonduality, nonduality is separation ... it just continues to fold on itself over and over. It's not that there is this emptiness over here on the left and form over here on the right. It's not that once upon a time there was emptiness and then form came and one day emptiness will return. Form is emptiness and emptiness is form right now. This is all happening simultaneously right now. Infinity ... all of infinity ... is right now, this moment. This Is It.

 

yeah i am constantly stunned these days by my inability to answer virtually any question posed to me without a paradox.

it is just a paradox and you are right.

 

so back to infinite consciousness..... i guess simultaneously i am oneness and i am seperate.

 

infinity exists in this moment, right now, which doesn't exist at all.

 

great answer sean, very interesting post.

 

ultimately my opinion on these matters is that if you are engaging in an activity, whatever it may be, that adds to your enjoyment of this experience..... then this is it.

[sean]

Back in the 80's I heard of a spiritual group, that went through phases of spiritual practice on a 'semester' basis. For a few months they'd emphasize mysticism (power), another: bhakti (devotion), another: jhana (knowledge). Or something similar to that. There are the different yogas: karma, jhana (not sure if I'm spelling that right), bhakti, dhyana (meditation).

 

The devotional part of it really moves things along. Devotional chanting, yearning for God. Basically anything that is part of, an expression of, the yearning. (ex, Could be washing the dishes. Not kidding.)

Interesting idea. You could emphasize each of the four major paths for a 3 month block and get nicely saturated in each one in a year.

 

FYI, the four major paths are jnana, bhakti, raja and karma.

 

Jnana yoga is the yoga of knowledge. The root "Jna" is actually etymologically the same as "gno" and "kno" as in gnosis and knowledge. Turning the mind to God through proper discernment. Bhakti is devotion. Definitely a big part of what I am trying to hit on here. Raja is the yoga of meditation and subtle body work, which dhyana is a limb of and kundalini yoga would also fall under. Karma yoga is the yoga of right action.

 

 

Sean

[neimad]

how appropriate.

i just opened up the latest fiction book to read and there was this quote.....

 

"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance."

 

T.S. Eliot.

[Trunk]

Interesting idea. You could emphasize each of the four major paths for a 3 month block and get nicely saturated in each one in a year.

 

FYI, the four major paths are jnana, bhakti, raja and karma.

Rightee-o! You remembered it better, and it does fit nicely in a year. And 3 months is enough time to soak in a practice, and probably about the time I'd get bored and want something different.

 

I bet that you could match them up with the seasons.

Here's my guess:

winter - jnana

spring - karma

summer - bhakti

fall - raja

 

Those seasons probably don't match with those practices exactly, and I don't think that they were really meant to (or.., maybe.., they were...). Which brings up an interesting segue subject of aligning practices with the seasons.

 

Jnana yoga is the yoga of knowledge. The root "Jna" is actually etymologically the same as "gno" and "kno" as in gnosis and knowledge. Turning the mind to God through proper discernment. Bhakti is devotion. Definitely a big part of what I am trying to hit on here. Raja is the yoga of meditation and subtle body work, which dhyana is a limb of and kundalini yoga would also fall under. Karma yoga is the yoga of right action.

Giggity-giggity!

Kick-ass.

Edited March 17, 2006 by Trunk

[freeform]

.

Edited January 7, 2020 by freeform

[Cameron]

That's interesting Freeform. In my western religion class at school I did research on Judaism a couple weeks ago and the difference between orthodox and reform. Orthodox really emphasizes the kind of set in stone structure of the old Testament, Moses as the primary prophet and really doing it the way they were taught thousands of years ago. Reform is more about the process. Gods revalations to humanity are not a static but ever evolving process. New teachings are included as the understadning grows and in interaction with new cultures and times.

 

To add to the study my teacher was an ordained Catholic Priest who left because of the limitations of free thinking and the whole no sex thing. The first day of class he said he thought Taoism was very useful to Westerners since it emphasizes simplicity.

 

Of course, there are probably some more complex , ritual based schools of religious Taoism just as in Buddhism.

Edited March 17, 2006 by Cameron